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W''ih^ 



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Monument to General Warren on Breed's Hill, 
Erected 1794. 



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HISTORY 



Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill, 



On June 17, 1775, 



-^J?ni\f^.^UTHENTIC SOURCES IN PRINT 



^^mmm^mmi^i^ 




GEORGE E. ELLIS. 



WITH A MAP OF THE BATTLE-GROUND, AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE 
MONUMENT ON BREED'S HILL. 



BOSTON: 
LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & COMPANY. 

1875. 






Copyright, 

George E. Ellis. 
1875. 



Cambridge : 
Press of John Wilson 6» Son. 



THE 
BATTLE OF BUNKER'S [BREED'S] HILL. 



PREPARATIONS. 

^ I ^HE reader of the following pages is 
-*- supposed to be informed of the state 
of affairs in and around Boston at the time 
of the opening" of hostilities at Lexington and 
Concord, between the provincials and the 
royal forces. The expedition sent into the 
country by the British commander on April 
19th, to seize or destroy the military supplies 
which had been gathered at Concord, under 
the full prescience that they would be needed 
in the final rupture that could no longer be 
averted, was but partially successful in its ob- 
jects, was inglorious in its whole character 
and results to the invaders, and decisive only 
in its effects upon the purpose and resolve of 
an outraged people. 

The Continental Congress at Philadelphia 
was still deliberating, averting a declaration 



4 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill 

which would break the last bond of allegi- 
ance to the mother country, and vainly hoping 
still to settle the strife by negotiation. Re- 
inforcements of foreign troops and supplies 
were constantly arriving in Boston. Howe, 
Clinton, and Burgoyne came, as generals, on 
the 25th of May. Bitterness, ridicule, and 
boasting, with all the irritating taunts of a 
mercenary soldiery, were freely poured on the 
patriots and on the " mixed multitude " which 
composed the germ of their army yet to be. 
The British forces had cooped themselves up 
in Boston, and the provincials determined 
that they should remain there, with no mode 
of exit save by the sea. The pear-shaped 
peninsula, hung to the mainland only by the 
stem called the " Neck," over which the tide- 
waters sometimes washed, was equally an 
inconvenient position for crowding regiments 
in warlike array, and a convenient one for the 
extemporized army which was about to be- 
leaguer them there. 

The islands in the harbor, which were, for 
the most part, covered with trees and grow- 
ing crops of hay and grain, with horses, sheep, 
and cattle, were envied prizes for the soldiers, 



Preparations. 5 

who lacked fuel, fodder, and fresh meat. The 
daring enterprise of those who lived in the 
settlements near on the mainland, attempting 
the ventures by night, or in the broad light 
of day, had stripped these ^islands of their 
precious wealth, much to the chagrin of the 
invaders. The light-house in the harbor was 
afterwards burned. In the skirmishes brought 
on by these exciting but perilous feats, espe- 
cially in that attending the successful removal 
of stock and hay on Noddle's Island, now 
East Boston, and on Hog Island, the pro- 
vincials obtained some valuable implements 
and muniments, especially four 4-pounders 
and twelve swivels. And from this begin- 
ning, all through the seven years of war that 
followed, the rebels were largely indebted for 
their weapons and accoutrements, and much 
other material of prime necessity and value to 
them, to their raids and privateering successes 
against the enemy. 

The town of Charlestown, which lay under 
the enemy's guns, had contained a popula- 
tion of between two and three thousand. The 
interruption of all the employments of peace, 
and the proximity of danger, had brought 



6 The Battle of Bimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

poverty and suffering upon the people. They 
had been steadily leaving the town, with such 
of their effects as they could carry with them. 
It proved to be well for them that they had 
acted upon the warning. It would seem that 
there were less than two hundred of its 
inhabitants remaining in it at the time of the 
battle, when the flames kindled by the enemy 
and bombs from a battery on Copp's Hill laid 
it in ashes. 

On the third day after the affair at Concord, 
the Provincial Congress again assembled, 
voted to raise at once 1 3,000 men, to rally at 
Cambridge and the neighborhood, and asked 
aid from the other provinces, to which Con- 
necticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire 
responded. The forts, magazines, and arse- 
nals, such as they then were, were secured 
for the country. Then, for the first time, the 
title of enemies became the synonyme of the 
English, military or civil, and of those of 
tory proclivities who sympathized with them. 
General Gage, the commander, was denounced 
as the agent of tyranny and oppression. An 
account of the affair on April 19th was sent 
to England, with an address closing with the 



The Provincial Army. 7 

words, "Appealing to Heaven for the justice 
of our cause, we determine to die or be free." 

By advice received from Lord Dartmouth, 
the head of the War Department, General 
Gage issued a proclamation on the 12th of 
June, in which he declared the discontents to 
be in a state of rebellion, offered a full pardon 
to all, with the exception of Hancock and 
Samuel Adams, who would lay down their 
arms and bow to his authority, and announced 
that martial law was now in force. 

This proclamation, issued on the first day 
of the week, was to be illustrated by a fearful 
commentary before another Sunday came. 

THE PROVINCIAL ARMY. 

Of the 15,000 men then gathered, by the 
cry of war, at Cambridge and Roxbury, all 
virtually, but not by formal investment, under 
the command of General Ward, nearly 10,000 
belonged to Massachusetts, and the remainder 
to New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Con- 
necticut. They have been designated since, 
at various times and by different writers, 
under the extreme contrast of terms, as an 



8 The Battle of Bimkei^s {Breed's] Hill 

"organized army," and a "mob." Either of 
these terms would be equally inappropriate. 
The circumstances under which the men who 
were to constitute our army were drawn 
together, and the guise in w^hich they came, 
without other concert or preparation than a 
wide-spread sense that almost any day with 
its alarm and outrage might summon them 
from field, barn, and workshop, will best define 
and describe them as they present them- 
selves before us now. The hardships they 
were to bear and the services they were to 
perform may secure to them as rightful a 
claim to be called soldiers as if they had been 
drilled in Pickering or Steuben's manual, and 
had been accoutred and armed with all the 
skill of a contractor and from all the resources 
of an arsenal. Our troops were "minute- 
men " extemporized into fragmentary com- 
panies and skeleton regiments. The officers, 
chosen on the village-green or in its public- 
house, paying for the honor by a treat, or 
perhaps because they kept the premises where 
the treat could be most conveniently fur- 
nished, were not commissioned or ranked as 
the leaders of an army for campaign service. 



The Provincial Army. g 

The yeomen of town and village had not come 
together at the summons of a commander-in- 
chief through adjutant, herald, or advertise- 
ment. They came unbidden, at an alarm 
from the bell on their meeting-house, or from 
a post-rider, or from the telegrams transmitted 
by tongue and ear. And they came for what 
they were and as they were, with their light 
summer clothing, in shirt and frock and 
apron ; with what was left from their last 
meals in their pantries packed with a few 
" notions " in sack or pillow-case, and with 
the ducking-guns, fowling-pieces, or shaky 
muskets used in old times against the vermin 
and game in the woods and the Indian skulk- 
ing in the thicket. And for the most part 
they were as free to go away as they had been 
to come. They were enlisted after a fashion, 
some prime conditions of which were their 
own convenience or pleasure. They might 
stay, as some of them expressed it, "for a 
spell, to see what was going on in camp," or 
they might plead the state of their farms, or 
the condition of their families, as a reason — 
not an excuse — for going home, with the 
promise of a return better prepared for what 



lo The Battle of Bunker'' s {Breed's] Hill 

might be wanted of them. Such of them as 
came from the seaboard might bring with 
them old sails for tents, while the midsum- 
mer days made it scarcely a hardship to many 
to have only the heavens for a roof. Gener- 
ally their towns were expected to keep them 
supplied with food. 

The men who made the centre and the 
flanks of the camp at Cambridge constituted 
an irregular and undisciplined assemblage, 
with the spirit and intent of a military host, 
but not yet organized into an army. They 
were without accoutrements or uniform, with 
no commissary, no military chest, no hospi- 
tals, no roll-call, no camp routine. The 
Provincial Congress had the matter of organ- 
ization under debate two days before the battle 
in Charlestown, and had appointed a com- 
mittee " to consider the claims and preten- 
sions of the colonels." Recruits and stragglers 
were continually coming in ; and many group- 
ings on the scene might have suggested a 
picnic, had such a thing then been known, for 
there were not wanting mothers, daughters, 
and sisters, as lookers-on among them. A 
most characteristic feature of the local and 



The Provincial Army. 1 1 

traditional usages of Massachusetts is illus- 
trated in the fact that of the company of 
minute-men in Danvers, Asa Putnam, a dea- 
con of the church, was chosen captain, and 
the Rev. Mr. Wadsworth, the pastor, his lieu- 
tenant. 

The forces then mustered at Cambridge as 
a central camp, and, stretching from the left 
at Chelsea almost round to Dorchester on the 
right, for nearly three quarters of a circle, 
were indeed not organized, nor yet had they 
any characteristic of a mere mob. They com- 
bined in fact four independent armies, united 
in resistance to a foreign enemy. They cer- 
tainly did not constitute a national army, for 
there was as yet no nation to adopt, maintain, 
and command them. They were not under 
the authority of the Continental Congress, for 
the authority of that Congress was not as yet 
acknowledged, nor had that Congress as yet 
recognized those forces, nor decided that it 
meant to come to the fight, and so would have 
need of an army. General Ward was in com- 
mand of the Massachusetts soldiers. The 
New Hampshire regiments had been put 
temporarily, and for the occasion, under his 



12 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

orders. The soldiers coming with their offi- 
cers from Connecticut and Rhode Island were 
not under the command of Ward, save as the 
friendly purpose which led them to volunteer 
their arms in defence of a sister colony, would 
be accompanied by the courtesy that would 
make them subordinate allies. Each of the 
Provinces had raised, commissioned, and as- 
sumed the supply of its respective forces, hold- 
ing them subject to their several orders. 
After the battle in Charlestown, the Com- 
mittee of War in Connecticut ordered their 
generals, Spencer and Putnam, while they 
were on the territory of this Province, to re- 
gard General Ward as the commander-in- 
chief, and suggested to Rhode Island and 
New Hampshire to issue the same instruc- 
tions to their soldiers. 

These provincial troops also were respec- 
tively almost as loosely organized and officered 
as was the combined army which they helped 
to constitute. Their field-officers held their 
places at the favor of the privates, and were 
liable to be superseded or disobeyed ; while 
even after Washington took the command of 
the adopted army, he was constantly annoyed 



The Provincial Army. 13 

and provoked by the obstinate resolution of 
the soldiers to assign place and rank accord- 
ing to their own inclinations and partialities. 

It is evident that forces composed of such 
elements, drawn together by the excitement 
of the hour, and subject at any time to dis- 
cord and disintegration, could act in concert 
only by yielding themselves to the influence 
of the spirit which had summoned them from 
farm and workshop at the busiest season of 
the year, when each of them was most needed 
at home. Yet many of those provincial sol- 
diers, though undisciplined by any thing like 
regular service, were by no means unused to 
the severities and exactions of a military life, 
having had experience in the Indian and 
French wars. They had learned, above all 
the other accomplishments of their profession, 
the art of covering themselves, especially their 
legs, behind an earthen screen, the butt of 
a tree, a thicket of bushes, or a stone wall. 

One regiment of artillery, with nine field- 
pieces, had been raised in Massachusetts, and 
put under command of the famous engineer, 
Colonel Gridley. But this was not yet full 
nor thoroughly organized. A self-constituted 



14 The Battle ofBimke?-'s [Breed's] Hill. 

Provincial Congress discharged the legislative 
functions, and a Committee of Safety, elected 
by that congress, filled the executive place of 
Governor and Council, confining its directions 
chiefly to military affairs. There was also a 
Council of War, with an undefined range as 
to advice and authority, sometimes mischiev- 
ously interfering with or confusing or cross- 
ing the arrangements, advice, and measures 
of the Committee. 

General Artemas Ward was a conscientious 
and judicious patriot. In the French war he 
had earned some military experience and 
fame. He was in the expedition under Gen- 
eral Abercrombie, and returned with the rank 
of lieutenant-colonel. In his civil and repre- 
sentative offices he had warmly espoused the 
cause of his country. On October 27, 1774, 
the Provincial Congress, in which he was a 
delegate, appointed him a* general officer, and 
on May 19 following, Commander-in-chief. 
As such he served at Cambridge till the ar- 
rival of Washington. On the very day of the 
battle in Charlestown, when the great chief- 
tain was selected for his high service, Ward 
was chosen by the Continental Congress as 



The Provincial Ariny. - 15 

its first major-general. Though he was only 
in his forty-eighth year when he was burdened 
with the responsibility of the opening war- 
fare, his body was infirm from disease and 
exposure. 

Lieutenant-General Thomas, two years the 
senior of Ward, was second in command. 
He was distinguished for talents, patriotism, 
and military qualities. He accepted his com- 
mission on May 27. During the siege of 
Boston, that followed the battle in Charles- 
town, he commanded a brigade at Roxbury, 
in proximity to the British lines. He after- 
wards took possession of and intrenched Dor- 
chester Heights, which bore a similar relation 
and position to Boston on the south as did 
those of Charlestown on the north, and he 
was thus the instrument of driving the Brit- 
ish soldiers from the town. He died in May, 
1776, while in command in Canada. 

General Seth Pomeroy, likewise famous in 
the border wars, continued to serve under the 
appointment of the Provincial Congress. 

General Israel Putnam preceded his Con- 
necticut troops in hurrying to the scene of 
war on the news of the affair at Lexington 



1 6 The Battle of Bunkers [Breed 's\ HilL 

and Concord. His rnen soon followed him, 
with like enthusiasm. The New Hampshire 
troops, on their arrival at Medford, made 
choice of Colonel John Stark as their leader. 
Colonel Nathaniel Greene commanded a regi- 
ment from Rhode Island. 



THE SCENE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 

The steady processes and transformations 
by which time, expansive growth, the neces- 
sities of crowded human life, enterprise, and 
improvement have changed the natural feat- 
ures of the scene now to be recalled, may 
require some effort from those now on the 
stage to reproduce its distinctive features. 
On no spot of this earth have such processes 
wrought more effectually than in the neigh- 
borhood of Boston. The visitor to the field 
of Waterloo is baffled in his efforts to trace 
the manoeuvres of its great day, even by so 
slight a change in its natural features as the 
removal of a ridge of earth to build the mound 
on which rests the memorial of the Belgic 
lion. But the levelling of hill-tops, the nar- 
rowing of rivcr-courscs by piers and wharves, 



The Scene and its Surroundings. 1 7 

the extension of bridges, the filUng in of thou- 
sands of acres of irrigated flats, and the thick 
planting of dweUings, marts of trade, and 
manufactories,' have strangely transformed the 
surroundings of the storied summit. Some 
thirty years ago, one who took his stand upon 
the top of the true Bunker Hill, before its 
crown had been removed, could trace the 
lines of the works which the British erected 
there with skill and complication after they 
took possession of the town. The battle 
summit, Breed's Hill, — not known by that 
name till after the action, — has not been 
reduced at the top, but it is so closed around 
that few of the points to which reference has 
to be made in tracing the events of the day 
are visible from it. Yet, by mounting the tall 
shaft, the visitor with an instructed eye, look- 
ing in turn through each of its four windows, 
may with some satisfaction of his curiosity 
reproduce some of the more important feat- 
ures of the scene. Those who were the 
prime actors in it would doubtless prefer to 
gaze upon it from their own monument as it 
now is. We, however, try for the hour to 
restore their panorama. 
2 



1 8 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

The three quarters of a circle of headlands, 
slopes, peninsulas, and eminences, once united 
by green levels, or divided by watercourses, 
and embracing a circuit of more than twenty 
miles, which we may now sweep from the 
windows of the monument, was at the time 
arrayed in all the beauty of its summer garb ; 
but it was stirring with all the signs of 
military occupancy and activity. The wide- 
spread wings of a patriotic army, such as has 
been described, extended over it, enclosing a 
dark spot with a coveted prize in the good 
town of Boston. Seaward, were the fair 
islands of the Bay. The enemy was rich in 
[ every form of water-craft, ships of war, gun- 
boats, transports, floats, and barges. But even 
with these they had to be very watchful, as 
they ventured near the shore of main or 
island ; for never were rats watched more 
patiently at their holes by skilled mousers, 
than were they by keen-eyed patriots, as yet 
not enrolled, but prospecting on their own 
charges and gains. A portion of Colonel 
Gerrish's regiment from Essex and Middlesex, 
and a detachment of New Hampshire troops 
stationed on the hills of Chelsea, formed the 



The Scene and its Surroundings. 19 

tip of the left wing of the patriot array. All 
along the eastern seaboard, to Cape Ann and 
Portsmouth, were watchful spies on the alert 
to spread the alarm if the British should any- 
where attempt a landing. Colonels Reed 
and Stark, next in the line, were stationed at 
Medford with their New Hampshire regi- 
ments. Lechmere's Point, at East Cam- 
bridge, was guarded against the enemy's 
landing, to which it offered great facilities, by 
parts of Colonel Little's and other regiments. 
General Ward, with the main body of about 
9,000 troops, and four companies of artillery, 
occupied Cambridge, its college halls as they 
then were, its English church, the vacated 
dwellings of some tories who had sought a 
change of air, and the intervals of field and 
woodland. 

The broad spaces of oozy and tide-soaked 
marsh, which doubled the present width of 
the rivers, were about equally a protection 
and a hindrance to military operations on 
either side. We must forget such things as 
bridges, for there was not one within the 
bounds of the historic scenes, save on the 
side of Cambridge towards Brighton. The 



20 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

salt flats had no causeways over them, and 
the shortest, even the only way between any 
two places, was a great way round. All the 
numerous points of highland, the farms, and 
the main roads, were cautiously defended or 
guarded, Lieutenant-General Thomas, with 
5,000 troops of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
and Connecticut, constituted the right wing 
of the army at Roxbury and Dorchester. 

Charlestown itself, like Boston, w^as also a 
pear-shaped peninsula, swelling roundly to 
the sea, into which flowed the Charles and 
the Mystic, whose waters approached so 
closely at the stem or neck, uniting it to the 
mainland, that one might stand upon it and 
toss a stone into the borders of either river. 
Charlestown, too, like Boston, had originally 
its five hill-tops, — for Boston's trimount de- 
signated only the three peaks of its Beacon 
Hill, and it had, besides, its Fort Hill and 
its Copp's Hill. The lowest of Charlestown's 
hills was a place of graves, where some of the 
stones to this day show the scars from the 
British cannon. The next, or Town Hill, 
was the public centre of the municipality. 
Moulton's Point, whence the bridge to Chelsea 



The British Army in Boston. 2 1 

now starts, and where the British forces made 
their first landing to assault the American 
works, has been wholly levelled within a 
quarter of a century. Of this, as of the other 
two summits, more is to be said by-and-by. 

The patriot army, thus extended, could be 
reached for assault by land only across Rox- 
bury Neck, at which point, however, the in- 
trenchments of the enemy and the safeguards 
of the provincials seemed to be equally secure. 
To a certain extent, also, the exposure of so 
many places in the American lines to injury 
from the armed ships and the floating bat- 
teries of the British was offset by shoal waters, 
swamps, and intersecting creeks. 

THE BRITISH ARMY IN BOSTON. 

Such were the constitution and the disposi- 
tion of the provincial forces when they found 
themselves engaged in the strange, but emer- 
gent, work of beleaguering their own chief 
town of Boston. That little peninsula was 
thus completely invested and hemmed in. A 
few days after the affair at Lexington, when 
virtually the siege began, General Gage, the 



22 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

British commander, at the soHcitation of some 
of the leading citizens assembled in Faneuil 
Hall, had, by a mutual understanding, entered 
into an agreement that such of the inhabi- 
tants as wished to depart from the town 
should be at liberty to do so, if they would 
leave their arms behind them and covenant 
not to engage in any hostility against his 
army. The agreement was availed of by 
many of the suffering and frightened people, 
whose means of living and opportunities to 
procure food were made precarious by the 
siege ; and they removed with their families 
and such of their effects as they could carry 
with them. The provincials reciprocated this 
indulgence by allowing such of those within 
their lines and of those who had been driven 
in from the country, as had tory proclivities, 
to go into the town for a refuge. But the 
original freedom and fulness of this under- 
standing, on the part of General Gage, were 
soon reduced by a very strict examination of 
those who sought to go out of the town, and 
by a rigid search of the effects which they 
wished to take with them. The tories, who 
clung to his protection, likewise objected to 



The British Army i7t Boston. 23 

the free and loose privilege of withdrawal 
allowed to those in sympathy with the rebels, 
and to making the town a refuge only for the 
loyalists, as in the event of an assault by the 
provincials their violence would have so much 
more of excitement to inflame it, and so 
much less of caution or forbearance to restrain 
it. Several of the inhabitants remained in it 
from different motives : some as devoted loyal- 
ists ; some as timid neutrals ; some as spies, 
to watch each hostile movement and to com- 
municate it to their friends outside. Some of 
these last, together with many deserters from 
the army, would occasionally cross the waters 
by swimming, or in skiffs by night, or would 
even contrive to pass the Roxbury lines, and 
either enter the American army or seek farm- 
work in the country. For many years after 
the war there were scattered over New Eng- 
land many stragglers, as well as some respect- 
able householders, who found it embarrass- 
ing, when questioned, either to trace their 
heritage on this soil or to account for their 
exile to it. The secret, known to themselves 
only, was, that they were deserters, or the 
children of deserters. The farming towns of 



24 The Battle of Bimker^s [Breed's] Hill 

New Hampshire and New York in this way 
adopted many of the subjects of Great Britain, 
and more still of the Hessian mercenaries. 

Among those who did not leave Boston 
were some, both loyalists and patriots, who 
remained there mainly to secure and watch 
over property which they could not remove. 
After hostilities commenced, General Gage, of 
course, regarded the citizens as alike prison- 
ers, either in the same sense in which he was 
himself under restraint, or as abettors of those 
who were his enemies. By the spies and 
deserters our officers generally received full 
information of all that occurred in Boston 
during the whole time of its investment by 
the provincials. The word " British " had now 
become odious and exasperating ; and though 
the regular army, encamped in the capital, 
might affect to despise the undisciplined mul- 
titude which kept it in such close quarters, it 
was compelled to regard its opponents as 
powerful and formidable. The population of 
the town, independent of the military, was 
then about 18,000. To all those who were 
not in sympathy with them the British be- 
haved in an insulting and exasperating man- 



The British Army in Boston. 25 

ner. Only from private letters, which came to 
light long after all risk from the exposure of 
their contents had been quieted, did those of 
a later generation learn the details of the 
sufferings and the insults endured by some of 
those whose circumstances compelled them to 
remain in Boston. During the nine months 
following the battle in Charlestown, through 
which the beleaguered British were compelled 
to bear their confinement, the constraint and 
sufferings of their own humiliation increased, 
and they avenged themselves by harsh and 
wanton deeds of mischief and vengefulness. 
To show, as members of the English Church 
establishment, their contempt of congrega- 
tional places of worship, they removed the 
pews and pulpit from the Old South meeting- 
house, and, covering the floor with earth, they 
converted it into a riding-school for Burgoyne's 
squadron of cavalry. The two eastern galler- 
ies were allowed to remain, one for spectators, 
the other for a liquor-shop, while the fire in 
the stove Was occasionally kindled by books 
and pamphlets from the library of a former 
pastor, Dr. Prince, which were in a room in 
the tower. One of the most precious manu- 



26 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

scripts of the early Plymouth Colony, Gover- 
nor Bradford's History, was purloined from 
that library, and carried to England. It was 
traced, only a few years ago, to the library of 
the Bishop of London, at Fulham ; and he 
allowed a copy of it to be taken for publica- 
tion by the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
Brattle Street meeting-house was treated with 
similar indignity. The steeple of the West 
meeting-house was destroyed, because it had 
been used for a signal-station. The Old North 
meeting-house and several dwellings were 
consumed for fuel. As the cold weather came 
on during the siege, all who were in Boston, 
friends and foes alike, suffered extremely for 
the lack of vegetables and fresh provisions 
and firewood, and the sills of the wharves 
were stripped for that purpose. 

At the time of the skirmishes at Lexinsr- 
ton and Concord there were about 4,000 
British troops in Boston and at the Castle. 
The number was increased to more than 
10,000 before the action in Charlestovvn. The 
best disciplined and most experienced soldiers 
in the kingdom, many of them freshly laurelled 
in the recent wars on the European continent, 



The British Army in Boston. 27 

composed the invading army. Gage, the 
governor, and commander-in-chief, had long 
resided in America, and had married here. 
He came originally as a lieutenant under 
Braddock, and was with that general when he 
received his mortal wound. He had been 
Governor of Montreal, had succeeded General 
Amherst in command of the British forces on 
this continent, and Hutchinson, as Governor 
of Massachusetts. He had constantly, and 
even violently, favored the oppressive meas- 
ures of the British ministry which brought 
on the war. He had strongly fortified Boston 
by a double line of intrenchments crossing 
the Neck, and by batteries there, and also 
upon the Common commanding Roxbury and 
Cambridge, upon Copp's Hill commanding 
Charlestown, upon Fort Hill, now levelled, 
upon the northern extremity of the town 
commanding the harbor, and upon West 
Boston Point. There were, besides, at least 
twenty-five armed vessels in the harbor. 
Bating the lack of fresh provisions and fuel, 
already referred to, the army was lavishly sup- 
plied for camp and field. 



28 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

THE COMBATANTS CONFRONTED. 

Thus confronted, both armies seemed ahke 
confident of success and anxious for a trial, 
though each had its own reasons for appre- 
hension and the consciousness of weak points 
exposed. The British were naturally mortified 
at their condition as besieged. They looked 
with misgiving to the heights on either hand, 
at Charlestown and Dorchester, and were 
forming plans for occupying them, having 
decided to make a movement for that pur- 
pose on the 1 8th of June. They regarded, 
or professed to regard, their opponents as 
rude, unskilled, and cowardly farmers, and 
were nettled at being kept at bay by an army 
of men in shirt-sleeves and calico frocks, 
carrying fowling-pieces hardly any two of 
which were of the same calibre. 

The provincials did not feel their lack of 
discipline, nor realize what would be the con- 
sequences of it, as they should have done. 
They were restless under restraint ; they were 
used, so far as they had had any military ex- 
perience, only to skirmishes, and thought such 
would be the contest before them. Yet in 



The Combatants Confronted. 29 

the Council of War and in the Committee of 
Safety there was a difference of opinion as 
to the safe and expedient measures to be pur- 
sued. If the heights of Charlestown were 
once occupied by the provincials, they would 
have to be held against a constant cannonade, 
if not also an assault. The fire of the enemy 
could not long be returned, as there were but 
eleven barrels of powder in the camp, and 
these contained one-sixth of the whole stock 
in the province. General Ward, and Joseph 
Warren, who was chairman of the Committee 
of Safety, and had been elected major-general 
on the 14th of June, — not yet commissioned, 
— were doubtful about the expediency of in- 
trenching on Bunker Hill. General Putnam 
was earnest in his advocacy of the measure. 
He said, " The Americans are not at all afraid 
of their heads, though very much afraid of 
their legs : if you cover these, they will fight 
for ever." Pomeroy coincided with Putnam. 
He said he was willing to attack the enemy 
with five cartridges to a man, for he had been 
accustomed, in hunting with three charges of 
powder, to bring home two or' three deer. 
Daring enterprise prevailed in the Council, 



30 The Battle of Bimker's \BreecVs\ Hill. 

and it was resolved that the heights of 
Charlestown, which had been reconnoitred the 
-month previous by Colonels Gridley and Hen- 
shaw, and Mr. Devens, should be fortified. 
On the 15th of June, the Committee of Safety, 
by a secret vote, which was not recorded till 
the 19th, advised the taking possession of 
Bunker's Hill and Dorchester Heights. On 
the next day the Provincial Congress, as a 
counterblast to General Gage's proclamation, 
by which Hancock and Adams had been ex- 
cepted from the proffer of a general amnesty, 
issued a like instrument, in which his Excel- 
lency General Gage and Admiral Graves were 
the scape-goats. 

It was amid the full splendor, luxuriance, 
and heat of our summer, when rich crops were 
waving upon all the hills and valleys around, 
that the Council of War decided to carry into 
execution the vote of the Committee of Safety. 
We may put aside the question as to pru- 
dence or promise of the enterprise, as being 
equally difficult of decision and unimportant, 
save as the misgivings of those who predicted 
that the deficiency of ammunition would 
endanger a failure, were proved by the result 



The Combatants Co7ifronted. 31 

to be well grounded. That result, as we shall 
see, was that the intrepid provincials, with the 
aid of a hastily raised earthen redoubt, a slight 
breastwork, and a rail-fence, twice staggered 
and repulsed an assailing body of disciplined 
soldiers of thrice their numbers, gallantly led 
on by courageous officers. On a third assault 
the provincials were driven from hill and field, 
the probability being, as even some of the 
assailants admitted, that if they had had am- 
munition and bayonets they would have kept 
the ground and won the day. 

On Friday, June i6th, the same day on 
which Washington was officially informed in 
the congress at Philadelphia of his appoint- 
ment to the command of the continental army 
about to be enhsted. General Ward issued 
orders to Colonels Prescott and Bridge, and 
the commandant of Colonel Frye's regiment, 
to have their men ready and prepared for 
immediate service. They were all yeomen 
from Middlesex and Essex counties, and were 
habituated to the hard labors of a farm be- 
neath a summer's sun. Captain Gridley's new 
company of artillery, and 120 men from the 
Connecticut regiment, uncier the command of 



32 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

Captain Knowlton, were included in the order. 
The whole force may have numbered, but 
could not have exceeded, 1,200 men. 



THE COiMMANDER OF THE PROVINCIALS 
IN THE BATTLE. 

In 1 818, a controversy arose concerning 
the command in this action. Who was actu- 
ally or rightfully its military head } This 
question, which most strangely and most un- 
fortunately became mingled with party poli- 
tics, was very earnestly and passionately 
discussed. As is usual in such cases where 
there is more than one opinion or side for 
partisanship, there were very many conflicting 
views and judgments. Every possible or 
conceivable suggestion as to the command 
was advanced, and had some degree of advo- 
cacy. Some maintained that General Ward 
himself should be regarded as the responsible 
officer of the day in all its operations. Others 
concluded that there was really no com- 
mander, in full authority as such, on the 
peninsula of Charlestown. Others still sought 
to propitiate the manes of the officers, whose 



Commander of the Provincials in Battle, ^'i^ 

respective champions were urging rival claims 
for them, by dividing the honors of the com- 
mand among two, three, or four chief actors 
at the various points where the critical move- 
ments of the day occurred. The heroic young 
patriot, Joseph Warren, who fell mortally 
wounded on leaving the redoubt, had the 
honor of the day assigned to him as chief in 
authority. But there were many who heard 
his own words, when Prescott offered to him 
the command, that he had not yet received 
his commission, and was on the ground only 
as a volunteer. And surely there is no evi- 
dence either that he had been assigned the 
command or that he gave any order in the 
whole action. 

The ideal picture of " The Battle of Bunker 
Hill," painted in London, by the Connecticut 
artist. Colonel John Trumbull, in 1786, first 
made Putnam the central figure in the re- 
doubt. The Rev. Josiah Whitney, in a ser- 
mon at the funeral of General Putnam, in 
1790, asserted that the detachment sent from 
Cambridge was put under his command. 
Colonel Daniel Putnam, son of the General, 
in a letter written in a most commendable 
3 



34 The Battle of Bufiker's [Breed's] Hill. 

spirit, and in a dignified style of statement 
and argument, and addressed to the officers 
of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, 
in 1825, advocates his father's claims. As 
a youth of fifteen, he says, he was with his 
father at Cambridge, in the camp, and for 
years after conversed with him freely upon 
what had then transpired. Most sincerely 
and most naturally the son received the im- 
pression that his father was in command of 
the expedition. But the careful reading of 
this letter will show that the son's impression 
was a matter of inference. The intrepid 
ardor of the General to have the enterprise 
undertaken at any risk, and his active move- 
ments and constant circuits through the day, 
might prompt that inference, as indicating 
that he regarded himself as virtually charged 
with the direction and oversight of the whole 
movement. But if so, his command was 
assumed, for it certainly was not assigned 
to him. Prescott received no orders from 
him. He felt himself at liberty to move 
about at his pleasure, and he left the penin- 
sula for Cambridge at least twice during the 
day. 



Commander of the Provincials in Battle. 35 

The only decisive authority which the 
parties to this heated and acrimonious con- 
troversy would have admitted to be satis- 
factory, would have been the production of 
the official order issued by General Ward. 
This, however, was not extant, or not avail- 
able. Judge Advocate Tudor, who presided 
at the courts-martial instituted by General 
Washington on his arrival at Cambridge, said 
that Colonel Prescott appeared to have been 
in command. The contradictory and dis- 
cordant statements of those who, having been 
engaged on the field at different places and 
at different hours, were called upon in the 
controversy forty years afterwards to give 
their depositions as to who was the com- 
mander-in-chief, are to be accounted for by 
the lapse of time and the effects of age, with, 
possibly, an allowance for their own partial- 
ities or prejudices. Besides, further and 
great allowances are to be made on account 
of the confusion in the army, its partially 
organized and undisciplined condition above 
recognized, and the hurried and unsystematic 
character and method of the expedition. 

He who led the detachment and fulfilled 



36 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill, 

the order doubtless received the order. The 
order was to intrench and to defend the 
intrenchments. This order was fulfilled by 
night and by day, by the body of men whom 
Prescott led from Cambridge to Charlestown, 
and by the reinforcements who joined the 
first detachment to co-operate with it. There 
is no evidence that there was during the 
action any transfer of the command by the 
coming on the ground of an officer of supe- 
rior rank to Prescott, or of any assumption 
of superior authority by such an officer. It 
might have been as dangerous then as in the 
more recent crisis in the nation's fate, — to 
have done what President Lincoln, in his own 
way, described as " swopping horses while 
crossing the river." Neither is there any 
evidence that Prescott received an order dur- 
ing the day from any other officer than Gen- 
eral Ward. It is certain, and now beyond 
all question, that he had the command of the 
day and the action. In a letter which he 
wrote from Cambridge to John Adams, a 
little more than two months after the affair, 
he refers, in a most matter-of-fact way, to his 
having received the order to march on the 



Night Work. 37 

expedition with about 1,000 men, and he 
mentions, in connection with several move- 
ments of the day, his own directions as com- 
mander. As fair and impartial a detail of 
the action and incidents of the day, as the 
purpose and the means of presenting it will 
secure, will be sufficient to satisfy the desire 
to set forth the simple truth. 

William Prescott had been a lieutenant in 
the French war at the taking of Cape Breton. 
While working on his farm at Pepperell, he 
had been chosen by the " minute-men " as 
their colonel. After the affair at Lexington 
he led his men to Cambridge. He was a 
member of the first Council of War. On 
May 27, being nearly fifty years old, in the 
full vigor of robust manhood, and of unquail- 
ing and dauntless courage, he was commis- 
sioned as colonel of the "Massachusetts 
Army." * 

NIGHT WORK. 

The longest days of the year in the latter 
half of June give scarce seven hours for any 

* See note at the end. 



38 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

enterprise that is to be done in concealment 
and darkness. The scene of the work now 
in hand was so near to a watchful enemy that 
even a loud sound might ensure exposure. 
Colonel Gridley accompanied the expedition 
as chief engineer. Three companies of 
Bridge's regiment did not go ; but as small 
parties of other regiments fell into the de- 
tachment, it may have had at the start about 
i,ooo men. They took with them provisions 
for one day, and blankets ; and the promise 
or expectation was that they were to be rein- 
forced in the morning. 

Prescott was ordered to take possession of, 
to fortify, and to defend Bunker's Hill, but to 
keep the purpose of the expedition secret. 
Nor was this known to the men until they 
came up with the wagons, on Charlestown 
Neck, laden with the intrenching tools. The 
detachment was drawn up upon Cambridge 
Common, in front of the pastor's homestead, 
which General Ward occupied as head-quar- 
ters, and prayer was offered by the Reverend 
President of the College, Dr. Langdon, who 
had himself been a classmate -of Samuel 
Adams. The expedition was in motion about 



Night Work, 39 

nine o'clock, the darkness just serving. Pres- 
cott, with two sergeants carrying dark lan- 
terns open in the rear, led the way. Though 
Prescott has frequently been represented in 
accounts and pictures of the battle as dressed 
in the working garb of the farmer, and ap- 
pears in Trumbull's ideal painting as wearing 
a slouched hat and bearing a musket, he was 
in fact arrayed in a simple and appropriate 
military costume, a three-cornered hat, a blue 
coat, with a single row of buttons, lapped 
and faced, and he carried his well-proved 
sword. This statement may be thought a 
trivial correction, but it sometimes happens 
that important facts depend upon small par- 
ticulars. As the commander was sensitive to 
the effects of summer heat and expected warm 
service, he took with him a linen coat or ban- 
yan, now called a sack, which he wore in the 
engagement. 

The order designated " Bunker's Hill " as 
the position to be taken. But by mounting 
it, even to-day, we can ourselves see that, 
cannonaded as it might be by shipping in 
the rivers, and annoyed by defences put up 
by the enemy on Breed's Hill, it would have 



40 The Battle of Bunker's {Breed's] Hill 

been altogether untenable except in connec- 
tion with the latter summit ; while for all 
purposes of restraining and annoying the 
enemy in Boston, Breed's Hill, with any 
reasonable works on its top, and its right 
and left declivities, would be a far superior 
position. It would seem that, outside of 
Charlestown, at least, the Hill on which the 
engagement took place was not known by its 
present distinctive name till after the war. 
Charlestown Heights, or Bunker's Hill, was 
the comprehensive designation. 

Much time, however, was consumed in de- 
liberation, and the natural hesitancy of a 
bewildered anxiety manifested by those who, 
equally concerned for the success of an en- 
terprise under any circumstances fearfully 
hazardous, differed widely in opinion as to 
the best course to be pursued. This hesi- 
tancy, which was felt on the way, resulted in 
a provoking delay of action after the detach- 
ment had crossed the neck and reached the 
peninsula. It was only after the repeated 
and urgent warnings of the engineer that any 
further postponement of a decision as to the 
spot where the intrenchments should be 



Night Work. 41 

raised would make the whole enterprise a 
failure, that it was concluded, even then not 
in accordance with the judgment of all the 
advisers, to construct the works upon Breed's 
Hill. It seems that the compromise, while 
'allowing the occupancy and defence of the 
lower summit to have the priority, carried 
with it a purpose to fortify Bunker's Hill as 
soon as possible afterwards. The deliberation 
and the delay brought on the midnight hour 
before the engineer had traced the lines of 
the proposed redoubt, and spades and pick- 
axes were busily plied to raise the protecting 
shield of loose earth. 

In the account of the engagement after- 
wards prepared by the Massachusetts Con- 
gress, it is said that Breed's Hill was occupied 
and fortified by a mistake. The reason for 
this statement is not apparent to us. Prob- 
ably if both summits could have been simul- 
taneously intrenched and defended by troops 
well supplied with ammunition and artillery, 
the provincials might have maintained their 
ground. But by occupying Bunker's Hill 
alone, with such scanty military appliances 
as they had, they could not have prevented 



42 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

the landing nor thwarted the hostile opera- 
tions of the enemy. As the summits are 
not within musket-shot, and as the British 
would certainly have occupied Breed's Hill, 
if it had not first been secured by the pro- 
vincials, our scant ammunition and weak ar- 
tillery would have been of but little avail. 

The relative features of the two summits 
have not as yet been essentially changed, 
except by the reduction and partial grading 
of the higher one, and the filling in of the 
quagmire between them. Their highest 
points were about 130 rods apart. Bunker's 
Hill lying a few rods north of a line drawn 
westward from Breed's Hill, which is directly 
opposite to Copp's Hill in Boston with a 
space of less than a mile, including the river, 
dividing them. A straight road then, as now, 
beginning at the narrowest point of Charles- 
town Neck, ascended and crossed the summit 
of Bunker's Hill, at an elevation, before re- 
duction, of 112 feet, descended to the base, 
and there joined a road that completely en- 
circled the base of Breed's Hill, which has a 
height of about 62 feet. One cross-road, now 
Wood Street, connected this encircling road 



Night Work. 43 

with what is now the Main Street of Charles- 
town. Back of the two summits the land 
sloped, with occasional irregularities, down to 
the Mystic River. An elevated point of land, 
bearing east from Breed's Hill and extending 
towards the bay, and called Morton's or Moul- 
ton's Point, swelled into a summit 35 feet 
high, called Morton's Hill. This has now 
been levelled. The bridge to Chelsea starts 
from this Point. Between Breed's Hill and 
the Point much of the ground was sloughy, 
and several brick yards and kilns were worked 
there. Breed's Hill was then chiefly used by 
householders in Charlestown for pasturage, 
and was intersected by many fences. Towards 
Mystic River and the Point some patches at 
the time of the action were covered with tall, 
waving grass, ripe for the scythe, while farther 
back, on the margin of the river, at the base 
of the two summits, were fine crops of hay, 
just mown, lying on the eve of the battle in 
winrows and cocks. The fences and the tall, 
unmown grass, which were of great advantage 
to the provincials in their stationary defences, 
were grievous impediments and annoyances 
to the British in their advances. There were 



44 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] HilL 

then only two or three houses and barns on 
the- south-western slope of Breed's Hill. The 
edifices of the town were gathered around the 
present Square, and extended sparsely along 
the Main Street to the Neck. 

The monument occupies the centre of the 
redoubt, which was eight rods square ; the 
southern side, running parallel with the Main 
Street, was constructed with one projecting 
and two entering angles. On a line with the 
eastern side, which faced the Navy Yard, was 
a breastwork of nearly 400 feet in length, 
running down the hill towards the Mystic. 
The sally-port opened upon the angle be- 
tween this breastwork and the northern side 
of the redoubt, and was defended by a blind. 
Colonel Gridley planned the works, which 
exhibited a combination of military science 
and Yankee ingenuity. No vestige of the 
redoubt now remains, but a portion of the 
breastwork is distinctly visible. When a 
square was cut around the monument grounds 
for house-lots, more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury since, the remains of the works raised by 
the British after the battle, lying west of the 
monument, which had previously been plain 
to the eye, all disappeared. * 



Night Work. 45 

Though the hands which spaded the bul- 
warks of earth on that summit during the 
night of Friday, June i6th, were used to daily 
toil, and brought to their unwonted midnight 
task the most unflinching courage and deter- 
mination, it was still a work of dreadful 
anxiety. It was a bright starlight night of 
midsummer, when the long hours of the day 
almost deny an interval to the darkness, and 
we expect almost momentarily after twihght 
in the west to behold the gray of morning in 
the east. There was a remnant of a waning 
moon just before midnight. A guard was 
stationed at the shore nearest Boston, to 
anticipate any movement of the enemy. Pres- 
cott himself went down there with Brooks, 
afterwards governor of the State, then a major 
in Bridge's regiment, and heard from the sen- 
tries relieving guard on the vessels the assur- 
ing cry, " All's well." After a while, Prescott, 
thinking it impossible that the sentries could 
be so hard of hearing, made another visit to 
the river's brink, and, finding all secure, re- 
called the guard. The -work went on, and 
burdened moments accomplished the results 
of ordinary hours. There was a scene and an 
enterprise for the imagination to picture. 



46 The Battle of BiinJzer's [Breed's] Hill, 

Even the narrow space between the shores 
was wider than the distance between those 
midnight delvers and their enemies. At least 
five armed vessels then floated in the middle 
of the stream. The " Glasgow," on the line 
of Craigie's, or East Cambridge, Bridge, with 
24 guns and 130 men, commanded the sum- 
mit of Bunker's I^ill and the Neck, by which 
the peninsula communicated with Medford 
and Cambridge. The " Somerset," with 6S 
guns and 520 men, lying near the draw of 
the present easternmost bridge, commanded 
Charlestown Square and its dwellings. The 
"Lively," with 20 guns and 130 men, lying 
off the present Navy Yard, could throw its 
shot directly upon the redoubt. The " Fal- 
con," sloop of war, lying off Moulton's Point, 
defended the ascent between the landing- 
places of the British and Breed's Hill. The 
" Cerberus," of 36 guns, maintained a con- 
tinual fire during the assaults on the provin- 
cials. These ships were most aptly moored 
for the purposes of the enemy, and it seems 
almost impossible that the sentries could have 
been wakeful at their posts and not have heard 
the operations of nearly a thousand men upon 
the Hill and near it. 



The Dawn mid the Confiict. 47 

THE DAWN AND THE CONFLICT. 

The four hours of darkness after the work 
of intrenchment began at last gave place to 
the beams of early morning. On that 
moment, when the sUn sent forth the first 
heralds of his coming, seems to have been 
suspended the fate of empires. Could the 
provincials have been favored with a dull and 
heavy fog, like that which afterwards gave 
them such help in delaying the discovery of 
their works on Dorchester Heights, allowing 
secret communication with Cambridge and 
more secure defences, they might possibly 
have retained their position. How awfully in 
contrast with the spell of glory which poured 
out over the darkened sky and the dew- 
sprinkled earth from the bursting radiance of 
the sun, was to be the scene on which the sun 
would go down upon that green eminence. 
That scene, where the heavens in their efful- 
gence greeted the earth in its loveliness, was 
to present at evening the most shocking hor- 
rors of desolation and agony. If true patriot- 
ism, if wise policy, at least if the love which 
Christian people of the same blood and line- 



48 The Battle of Bu7iker's [Breed's] Hill, 

age should bear to each other, had been al- 
lowed its full, free influence over the parties 
in the approaching struggle, how much misery 
and fruitless wretchedness might have been 
averted ! Even then it was not too late for 
simple justice to have ensured peace. The 
blood shed at Concord and Lexington, with 
the long list of antecedent outrages, might 
have been forgiven by our fathers. They had 
not in any case been the aggressors. They 
acted only on the defensive. The blows which 
they struck were to ward off other blows to 
follow those already received. There is no 
evidence that the heights of Charlestown 
were occupied for any other purpose than that 
of defence, to confine the enemy to the narrow 
quarters into which they had intruded, and 
to prevent a repetition of hostile incursions 
into the country. 

When the morning sun displayed to the 
astonished invaders the character of the last 
night's labor, and showed them the workmen 
still employed with undismayed hearts and 
unexhausted hands, it was not even then too 
late for peace. Gage and his officers, at least, 
if their hired subordinates did not, should 



The Dawn mid the Co7iflict. 49 

have honored, though they might not have 
feared, that patriot band ; should have re- 
spected the spirit which controlled them, and 
have counted the cost of the bloody issue. 
But not one moment, not one word, perhaps 
not one thought, was spent upon hesitation, 
intercession, or remonstrance. 

The instant that the first beams of light 
marked distinctly the outlines of the daring 
provincials and of their intrenchments on the 
Hill, the cannon of the " Lively," which floated 
nearest, opened a hot fire upon them, at the 
same time arousing the sleepers in Boston to 
come forth as spectators or actors in the 
cruel tragedy. The other armed vessels, 
some floating batteries, and that on Copp's 
Hill, 1,200 yards distant, combined to pour 
forth their volleys, uttering a startling and 
dismal note of preparation for the day's con- 
flict. But the works, though not completed, 
were in a state of such forwardness that the 
missiles of destruction fell wellnigh harmless, 
and the intrenchers continued to strengthen 
their position. The earthwork was between six 
and seven feet high. The enemy in Boston 
could scarcely credit their eyesight. Pres- 
4 



50 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

cott, the hero of the day, with whom its proud- 
est fame should rest, was undaunted, ardent, 
and full of a bounding energy. He devised 
and directed ; he encouraged his men ; he 
mounted the works ; and with his bald head 
uncovered, and his commanding frame, and 
his simple military insignia, he was a noble 
personification of a patriot cause. Some of 
the men incautiously ventured in front of the 
works, when one of them was instantly killed 
by a cannon shot. This first victim was at 
once interred, and his companions were warned 
of what the day would bring nearer to them. 

When the orders had been issued at Cam- 
bridge the previous evening, to those who 
had thus complied with them, refreshments 
and reinforcements had been promised in the 
morning. Thus some of the weary men, who 
had not one moment for sleep or repose, but 
had been tasked to the uttermost, might have 
inferred that they had done their work, were 
entitled to relief, and were even at liberty 
to depart. Some few did leave the Hill, and 
did not return. Those who remained were 
exhausted with their toil, without food or 
water, and the morning was already intensely 



The Dawn and the Conflict. 5 1 

hot. Two barrels of water had been knocked 
in pieces by a shot from one of the vessels. 
Some of the officers, sympathizing with the 
situation and sufferings of the men, requested 
Prescott to send to Cambridge for relief by 
another detachment to hold the works. He 
summoned a council of officers, but was him- 
self resolute against the petition, saying that 
the enemy would not venture an attack, and, 
if they did venture, would be repulsed ; that 
the men who had raised the works were best 
able to defend them, and deserved the honor 
of a sure victory, and that they had already 
learned to despise the fire of the enemy. 
The vehemence of the commander infused 
new spirit into the men, and they resolved 
to stand the dread issue. Prescott ordered 
a guard to the ferry to resist a landing there. 
He was seen by Gage, who was reconnoitring 
from Copp's Hill, and who asked of Coun- 
sellor Willard, at his side, "Who is that 
officer commanding } " Willard recognized 
his own brother-in-law, and named Colonel 
Prescott. "Will he fight.?'* asked Gage. 
The answer was, " Yes, sir, depend upon it, 
to the last drop of blood in him ; but I cannot 



52 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] mil. 

answer for his men." Yet Prescott could an- 
swer for his men, and that amounted to more 
than Willard's opinion. 



PREPARATIONS OF THE ENEMY. 

The measures of the enemy were undoubt- 
edly delayed by sheer amazement and sur- 
prise, on finding that the intrepidity of the 
provincials had anticipated them in an enter- 
prise which they had deliberately decided to 
take upon themselves. In the Council of 
War called by Gage, at the Province House, 
all were unanimous that the enemy must be 
dislodged ; but there were different opinions 
as to the manner of effecting this object. 
The majority agreed with Generals Clinton 
and Grant in advising that the troops should 
be embarked at the bottom of the Common, 
in boats, and, under the protection of the 
ships and floating batteries, should land at 
Charlestown, and thus hold provincials and 
intrenchments at their mercy. But General 
Gage overruled the advice, and determined 
upon landing and making an attack in front 
of the works, fearing that his troops, if landed 



Preparations of the Enemy. 53 

at the Neck in Charlestown, would be ruin- 
ously entrapped by the intrenchers and the 
main forces at Cambridge. 

The grounds for this difference of opinion' 
among the royal officers in council, as to the 
course to be pursued in an effort to dislodge 
the provincials, were so obvious and natural, 
that they would seem to have been antici- 
pated in the camp at Cambridge, and to have 
had their influence there. All through the 
day General Ward was apprehending that a 
landing might be attempted at the Neck, and 
was of course distracted by this apprehension 
as to the expediency and safety of weakening 
his own force by sending further detachments 
to the peninsula. The armed vessels of the 
enemy were very active during the day in 
raking the low tongue of land between Cam- 
bridge and Charlestown, and many who 
passed between the two towns made a long 
circuit on the ridges bordering upon Medford. 
The enemy did open a brisk cannonade upon 
Roxbury ; and this increased the fears of 
General Ward, that they might divide their 
forces, and, while assailing the intrenchers in 
front or rear, rush out upon Cambridge or 



54 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

Watertown, where the scanty stores were 
deposited. These facts account for the hesi- 
tation of Ward to comply with the urgent 
sohcitations brought to him through messen- 
gers sent frequently through the day from 
Prescott and Putnam, for reinforcements on 
the peninsula. 

By nine o'clock the bustle and array in 
Boston, visible from the Hill in Charlestown, 
indicated that preparations were making for 
an attempt to dislodge the provincials. Pres- 
cott therefore abandoned his first confident 
opinion that he would not be assailed, and 
comforted himself and his men with the assur- 
ance of immunity and of a glorious victory. 
He sent Major Brooks to General Ward to 
urge the necessity of his being reinforced, 
by men and supplies. As Captain Gridley 
would not risk one of his artillery horses 
on the road, raked by gunboats and by the 
" Glasgow " frigate. Brooks had to go on foot, 
and he reached head-quarters, where the Com- 
mittee of Safety was then in session, at about 
ten o'clock. Brooks's urgency, seconded by 
the solicitations of Richard Dcvens, a mem- 
ber of the committee and a citizen of Charles- 



Preparations of the Enemy. 55 

town, induced Ward to order that Colonels 
Reed and Stark, then at Medford, should 
reinforce Prescott with the New Hampshire 
troops. The companies at Chelsea were then 
recalled, and the order reached Medford at^ 
eleven o'clock. The men were as speedily 
as possible provided with ammunition, though 
much time was consumed in the preparation. 
Each received two flints, a gill of powder, and 
lead for fifteen balls. They had no cartridge 
boxes, and used horns, pouches, or their 
pockets as substitutes. The lead organ-pipes 
of the English Church in Cambridge were 
made serviceable for slugs, beaten by the men 
into size and shape to suit the different calibre 
of their guns. 

General Putnam, burning with zeal and 
intrepidity, was coursing through the whole 
day over nearly all of the contested field. He 
is said to have visited the redoubt in the 
night or in the early morning. He was 
mounted ; and so narrators, who were in or 
near the action, when questioned at the time, 
or long afterwards, testified to seeing him in 
so many places that he would appear to have 
been wellnigh ubiquitous. 



56 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill 

Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the most dis- 
tinguished and self-sacrificing of the many 
patriots of the time, had not yet accepted 
the commission already mentioned as offered 
him on the 14th of June. He had twice 
maintained the cause of his country, in the 
very teeth of British officers, on the annual 
commemoration of the 5 th of March. When 
the report of the coming action reached him 
at Watertown, where he then was, as acting 
president of the Provincial Congress and 
Chairman of the Committee of Safety, though 
he was suffering from illness and exhaustion, 
he resolved to join in the strife. Wholly 
inexperienced as he was in military tactics, 
his determination could not be shaken by the 
earnest remonstrances of his friends. His 
presence and counsel were needed in the 
Committee, but he persisted in his resolve. 
We must lament, as all his contemporaries 
lamented, that his heroism outran his pru- 
dence, and would not be restrained by duty 
in another direction. 



Embarkation and Landing of the Etiemy. 57 



EMBARKATION AND LANDING OF THE 
ENEMY. 

From their slightly fortified Hill the pro- 
vincials could watch and mark the hostile 
movements and preparations of the British. 
General Howe was put in command of their 
detachment. The following extracts from 
his Orderly Book will vividly reproduce a part 
of the arrangements : — 

"General Morning Orders. 

Saturday, June 17, 1775. 

The companies of the 35 th and 49th that are 
arrived, to land as soon as the transports can get 
to the wharf, and to encamp on the ground marked 
out for them on the Common. 

Captain Handfield is appointed to act as assist- 
ant to the deputy-quartermaster-general, and is to 
be obeyed as such. 

The-^ten eldest companies of Grenadiers, and 
the ten eldest companies of Light Infantry (exclu- 
sive of those of the regiments lately landed), the 
5th and 38th Regiments, to parade at half after 
eleven o'clock, with their arms, ammunition, 
blankets, and the provisions ordered to be cooked 



58 The Battle of Bunker's \_B reed's] Hill. 

this morning. They will march by files to the 
Long Wharf. 

The 43d and 5 2d Regiments, with the remain- 
ing companies of Light Infantry and Grenadiers, 
to parade at the same time, with the same direc- 
tions, and^march to the North Battery. The 47th 
Regiment and ist Battalion of Marines will also 
march, as above directed, to the North Battery, 
after the rest are embarked, and be ready to em- 
bark there when ordered. 

The rest of the troops will be kept in readiness 
to embark at a moment's warning. 

One subaltern, one sergeant, one corporal, one 
drummer, and twenty privates to be left by each 
corps for the security of their resiDCCtive encamjD- 
ments. 

Any man who shall quit his rank on any pre- 
tence, or shall dare to plunder or pillage, will be 
executed without mercy. 

The Pioneers of the Army to parade immedi- 
ately and march to the South Battery, where they 
will obey such orders as they will receive from 
Lieutenant-Colonel Cleveland. 

The Light Dragoons, mounted, to be sent imme- 
diately to the lines, where they will attend and obey 
the orders of the officer commanding there. 

Two more to be sent in like manner to head- 
quarters. 



E7nharkation and Landing of the Enemy. 59 

Signals for the boats in divisions, moving to the 
attack on the rebels intrenched on the heights of 
Charlestown : Blue Flag to advance j Yellow, to 
lay on oars ; Red, to land." 

At noon, when it would seem that the pro- 
vincials ceased to work on the redoubt, twenty- 
eight barges, formed in two parallel lines, left 
the end of Long Wharf, and made for Moul- 
ton's Point, the most feasible and best pro- 
tected landing-place. The barges were crowded 
with British troops of the 5 th, 38th, 43d, and 
5 2d battalions of infantry, two companies of 
grenadiers, and ten of light-infantry. These 
troops were all splendidly appointed, with glit- 
tering firelocks and bayonets, but sadly encum- 
bered for the hot work before them and the 
hot sun over them, by their arms and ammu- 
nition ; and it would seem by the statement of 
their own historian, Stedman, that they carried 
a hundred pounds of provision, intended to 
last for three days. Their regular and uni- 
form appearance, with six pieces of ordnance 
shining in the bows of the leading barges, 
presented an imposing and alarming spectacle 
to our raw soldiery. Some of the regulars that 
had lately arrived had been retained on board 



6o The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill, 

of the transports, on account of the crowded 
state of Boston. A portion of these were 
landed for the first time at Charlestown, and 
the first spot of American soil upon which 
many of them trod gave them their graves. 

The officers were all men of experience and 
valor. Generals Howe and Pigot, Colonels 
Nesbit, Abercrombie, and Clarke, Majors 
Butler, Williams, Bruce, Spendlove, Smelt, 
Mitchell, Pitcairn, Short, Small, and Lord 
Rawdon, were the most distinguished. Cap- 
tain Addison, aUied to the author of the 
" Spectator," had arrived in Boston on the 
day preceding the battle, and had then re- 
ceived an invitation to dine with General 
Burgoyne on the i/th, when a far different 
experience awaited him, for he was numbered 
among the slain. 

This detachment landed at Moulton's Point 
about one o'clock, defended by the shipping 
and wholly unmolested. They soon discov- 
ered an egregious and provoking act of 
carelessness on the part of their Master of 
Ordnance, in sending over cannon balls too 
large for the pieces. These were at once 
returned to Boston, and were not replaced in 



Embai'kation and Landing of the Enemy. 6i 

season for the first action. At the same time 
General Howe, the commander of the detach- 
ment, requested of General Gage a reinforce- 
ment, which he judged to be requisite the 
moment that he had a fair view of the elevated 
and formidable position of the provincials, as 
seen from the Point. 

While these messages were passing, some 
of the British soldiers, stretched at their ease 
upon the grass, ate in peace their last meal, 
refreshing their thirst from large tubs of in- 
vigorating drinks, — a tantalizing sight to the 
hungry and thirsty provincials. About two 
o'clock the reinforcement landed at Madlin's 
ship-yard, about the middle of the present 
Navy Yard water-front. It consisted of the 
47th battalion of infantry, a battalion of ma- 
rines, and some more companies of grenadiers 
and light-infantry. The whole number of the 
British troops who were engaged in the course 
of the action did not fall short of, and perhaps 
exceeded, 5,000. In connection with this 
force, so far exceeding that of the provincials 
in numbers, and so immeasurably superior in 
discipline and military appointments, we are 
to consider the marines in the ships which 



62 The Battle of Bimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

cannonaded three points of the Hill, and the 
six-gun battery on Copp's Hill, as engaging in 
the unequal contest. Contrasting a British 
regular with a provincial soldier, we are 
accustomed to ascribe immense advanta^'es of 
discipline to the former. Yet we are to re- 
member that an overpowering superiority of 
character and of cause was on the side of 
the latter. If we could have followed a re- 
cruiting sergeant of Great Britain at that time 
as he hunted out from dram-shops and the 
haunts of idleness and vice the low and 
depraved inebriate, the lawless and dissolute 
spendthrift, seeing how well the sergeant knew 
where to look for his recruits, we should have 
known how much discipline could do for them, 
and how much it must leave undone. The 
provincials were not acquainted with the terms 
and forms of military tactics. But they knew 
the difference between half-cock and double- 
cock ; and the more they hated the vermin 
which they had been wont to hunt with their 
fowling-pieces, the straighter did the bullet 
speed from the muzzle. But their superiority 
consisted in the kind of pay which engaged 
them in their ranks, not in pounds and shil- 



A Provincial Outwork. d^^ 

lings, but in a free land, a happy home, laws of 
their own making, and rulers of their own 
choice. 

A PROVINCIAL OUTWORK. 

While the British troops were forming their 
lines, a slight work was constructed, princi- 
pally by the Connecticut troops, sent by 
Prescott from the redoubt, under Captain 
Knowlton, which proved of essential service 
to the provincials. A double rail-fence, under 
a small part of which a stone-wall was piled 
to the height of about two feet, ran from the 
road which crossed the level between Bun- 
ker's and Breed's Hills, towards the shore of 
the Mystic, with a few apple-trees on each 
side of it. The provincials pulled up some 
other fence material near by, and set it in a 
line parallel with this, filling the space between 
with the fresh-mown hay on the ground. The 
length of this slight defence was about 700 
feet. It was about 600 feet in rear of the 
redoubt and breastwork, and, had it been on 
a line with them, would have left a space of 
about 100 feet between the ends of the 
earthen and the wooden and hay defences. 



64 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

Thus there was an opening of about 700 feet 
on the slope of the hill between the intrench- 
ments and the rail-fence, which the provin- 
cials had not time to secure. Part of this 
intervening space was sloughy ; and as there 
were no means of defending it, save a few 
scattered trees, the troops behind the breast- 
work, as we shall soon see, were exposed to 
a galling fire from the enemy, on the third 
assault, which largely contributed to the un- 
favorable result of the conflict. The six 
pieces of British artillery were stationed at 
first upon Moulton's HilL 



THE SUSPENSE. 

All these preparations, visible as they were 
to thousands of persons from hill-top, steeples, 
and roofs, were watched with the intensest 
anxiety. The common persuasion and appre- 
hension were that General Gage would him- 
self lead a portion, if not the whole, of the 
residue of his army, in an attack upon some 
other point in the semicircle. The heavy 
cannonading of Roxbury was designed to 
detain the forces there, so that they should 



The Suspense. 65 

not be of service for Charlestown. A 
schooner, with 500 or 600 men, was directed 
to the Cambridge shore, but wind and tide 
proved unfavorable. In fear of these move- 
ments, great caution was necessary in the 
attempt to send reinforcements to Breed's 
Hill. Captain Callender was ordered there 
with his artillery. Gardiner's, Patterson's, 
and Doolittle's regiments were stationed at 
different points between Charlestown Neck 
and Cambridge. This Neck, though fre- 
quently crossed by our officers and men in 
single file, was fearfully hazardous during the 
whole day, as it was raked by a fire of round, 
bar, and chain shot from the *' Glasgow " and 
two gondolas near the shore. Some rein- 
forcements arrived from Medford before the 
engagement, though General Stark had led 
them very moderately, insisting that " one 
fresh man in battle is worth ten fatigued 
ones." General Putnam stopjDed a part of 
them to unite with a detachment from the 
redoubt in attempting to fortify Bunker's 
Hill, which was of supreme consequence to 
the provincials if they should be driven from 
Breed's Hill. Stark, with oaths and encour- 
5 



66 The Battle of Bimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

agements, led on the remainder to the rail- 
fence. It does not appear that much if any 
relief was sent during the day in food or drink 
to the overtasked force in the redoubt. 

It soon became a matter of urgency to the 
provincials to seek the utmost possible help 
from their artillery. But it amounted to very 
little. A few ineffectual shots had been fired 
from Gridley's pieces on the redoubt, against 
Copp's Hill and the shipping, when the pieces 
were removed and planted with Captain Cal- 
lender's, in the unprotected space between the 
fence and the breastwork. Here they would 
have been of some service in defending our 
weakest and most exposed point. But the 
officers and the companies who had them in 
charge were wholly unskilled in their man- 
agement ; and, on the plea of having unsuit- 
able cartridges, Callender was drawing off the 
pieces to prepare ammunition, when Putnam 
urged him to restore them to their position. 
They were fired a few times, and soon after- 
wards were moved by Captain Ford to the 
rail-fence. 

General Pomeroy, at Cambridge, old as he 
was, was stirred like the war-horse at the smell 



The Suspense. 67 

of the battle. He begged a horse of General 
Ward, that he might ride to Charlestown ; 
but, on reaching the Neck, and observing the 
hot fire which raked it, he was afraid to risk 
the borrowed animal. Giving him then in 
charge to a sentry, he walked on to the 
rail-fence, where his well-known form and 
countenance called forth enthusiastic shouts. 
Colonel Little came up with his regiment, and 
the men were stationed alons: the line, from 
the rail-fence to a cart-way on the left. There 
were also reinforcements of about 300 troops 
each from Brewer's, Nixon's, Woodbridge's, 
and Doolittle's regiments, detachments of 
which were stationed along the Main Street, 
in Charlestown. Colonel Scammans, who was 
deprived of sense and courage, either by con- 
fusion or fear, had been ordered by Ward to 
go where the fighting was. He went to Lech- 
mere's Point, East Cambridge, understanding, 
as he said, that the enemy were landing there. 
He was advised to go to the Hill. He chose 
to understand the nearest hill, and so he 
posted himself on Cobble Hill, where now 
stand the Appleton Wards of the McLean 
Asylum, and occupied that useless position. 



68 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

General Warren arrived just before the action. 
Putnam endeavored to dissuade him from 
entering it ; but Warren could not be thus 
wrought upon. He said he came only as a 
volunteer, and instead of seeking a place of 
safety, wished to know where the onset would 
be most furious. Putnam pointed to the 
redoubt as the critical place. Prescott there 
offered to receive Warren's orders ; but he 
repeated that he was happy to serve as a 
volunteer. 

The tune of " Yankee Doodle," which 
afforded the British so much sport as ridicul- 
ing the provincials, was the tune by which 
our fathers were led on to the contest. Let 
their example commend to us this only way 
of depriving ridicule of its sting, for there is 
nothing which it so much annoys men to 
spend in vain as their scorn. 

Before the engagement began, Captain 
Walker, of Chelmsford, led a band of about 
fifty resolute men down into Charlestown to 
annoy the enemy's left flank. They did great 
execution, and then abandoned their danger- 
ous position, to attack the right flank on 
Mystic River. Here the Captain was wounded 



The First Assault, and its Repulse. 69 

and taken prisoner. He died of bis wounds 
in Boston jail. 



THE FIRST ASSAULT, AND ITS REPULSE. 

The British, in their attack, aimed at two 
distinct objects: first, to force and carry the 
redoubt ; second, to turn the left flank of the 
provincials, and to cut off their retreat. To 
accompHsh the former. General Pigot, who 
commanded the British left wing, displayed 
under cover of the eastern slope of the Hill, 
and advanced against the redoubt and breast- 
work. General Howe led the right wing, 
which advanced, angularly, along the shore of 
the Mystic toward the rail-fence. The artil- 
lery prepared the way for the infantry ; and it 
was at this time that the blunder of the over- 
sized balls was a great grievance to the enemy, 
as they had but a few rounds of proper shot. 

It was of vital necessity that every charge 
of powder and ball spent by the Americans 
should take effect. There was none for waste. 
Some of the very last charges fired by them 
on that day had been snatched from the 
cartridge-boxes of their dead or wounded foes 



70 The Battle of B linker's [Breed's] Hill. 

by a few venturesome individuals who had 
got out of the precious article. The provin- 
cial officers commanded their men to withhold 
their fire till the enemy were within eight 
rods, and, when they could see the whites of 
their eyes, to aim at their waist-bands ; also, 
'* to aim at the handsome coats, and pick off 
the commanders." As the British left wing 
came within gunshot, the men in the redoubt 
could scarcely restrain their fire, and a few 
discharged their pieces. Prescott, indignant 
at this disobedience, vowed instant death to 
any one who should repeat it, and promised, 
by the confidence which they reposed in him, 
to give the command at the proper moment. 
His lieutenant-colonel, Robinson, ran round 
the top of the works and knocked up the 
levelled muskets. When the space between 
the redoubt and the assailants was narrowed 
to the appointed span, the word was spoken 
at the moment. The deadly flashes burst 
forth, and the green grass was crimsoned by 
the life-blood of hundreds. The front rank 
of the assailants was nearly obliterated, as 
were its successive substitutes, as the Amer- 
icans were well protected, and had been so 



The First Assault, and its Repulse. 7 1 

deliberate in their aim. The enemy fell like 
the tall grass before the practised sweep of 
the mower. General Pigot was obliged to 
give the word for a retreat. Some of the 
wounded were seen crawling with the last 
energies of life from the gory heap of the 
dying and the dead, among whom the officers, 
in their proportion, largely outnumbered the 
privates. As the wind rolled away the suffo- 
cating smoke, and the blasts of artillery and 
musketry for a few minutes ceased, the awful 
spectacle, the agonizing yells and shrieks of 
the sufferers, were distracting and piercing. 
The insanity of war never had a more full 
demonstration than in that scene, when a 
corps of mercenaries that had crossed the 
ocean in the service of a foreign despotism, 
with as little intelligence as beasts, and with 
no conscience whatever, were pitting them- 
selves in vain efforts to wrest from men the 
heritage of country and freedom to which 
they were born, or which they had made their 
own by the desert of earning it and know- 
ing how to improve it. Prayers and groans, 
foul, impious oaths, and fond invocations of 
the loved and dear, were mingled into sounds, 



72 The Battle o/Bimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

which seemed scarcely of human utterance, 
by the rapturous shouts of a vengeful joy 
which rang from the redoubt. This earth 
has not . a sight nor a sound more madden- 
ing in its passion or its woe than that which 
only a battle-field yields to soldier or to man. 
Hell then gushes forth from its prison in the 
bowels of the earth and the dark passions of 
the breast, and covers the fair surface of the 
ground with the flames and yells of demoniac 
strife. 

While such was the temporary fortune of 
the field near the redoubt, General Howe, 
with the right wing, made for the rail-fence, 
where Putnam, assisted by Captain Ford's 
company, had posted the artillery with prom- 
ise of advantage. Here, as at the redoubt, 
some of the provincials had been tempted to 
discharge their muskets while the advancing 
enemy paused to destroy a fence which ob- 
structed their progress. Putnam, with an 
oath, threatened to cut down with his sword 
the next offender who dared to risk the waste 
of another musket-charge. The word was 
given when the enemy were within eight 
rods. The artillery had already made a lane 



The First Assault, and its Repulse. 73 

through the advancing column, and now the 
fowUng-pieces mowed down their victims, 
especially the officers, with fatal celerity. 
The strong lungs of Major McClary raised 
the voice of encouragement above the roar of 
the cannon. The assailants were compelled 
to retreat, leaving behind them heaps of the 
fallen ; while some of the flying even rushed 
to their boats, as if for the security of another 
element. The British artillery had been 
sloughed among the brick-kilns, besides lack- 
ing proper shot, and. so could do but little. 
The regulars did not take aim, and thus their 
discharge passed high above the heads of the 
provincials. The trees around were after- 
wards observed with their trunks unscathed, 
while their branches had been riddled by 
bullets. The passionate shout of victory 
echoed from the fence to that from the re- 
doubt, and even the coward was nerved to 
daring. 

Now it was that our troops and our cause 
suffered from the want of discipline, and from 
the confusion apparent in the v/hole manage- 
ment of the action, originating in the extem- 
porized and imperfect preparation, and in the 



74 The Battle of Bunker's {Breed's] Hill. 

baffling secrecy of the purposes of the enemy. 
The neck of land, ploughed by the incessant 
volleys from the ships, and clouded by the 
dust thus raised, was an almost insuperable 
barrier to the bringing on of reinforcements. 
Major Gridley, wholly lacking in spirit and 
skill, had been put in command of a battalion 
of infantry, in compliment to his father. He 
lost, and could not recover, his self-possession 
and courage. Though ordered to the Hill, he 
advanced towards Charlestown, slowly and 
timidly ; and, though urged by Colonel Frye 
to hasten, he was satisfied with the scant 
service of firing 3-pounders from Cobble Hill 
upon the *' Glasgow " frigate. His captain, 
Trev^ett, refused obedience to such weakness, 
and ordered his men to follow him to the 
works. Colonel Gerrish, with his artillery on 
Bunker's Hill, could neither be urged nor 
intimidated by Putnam to bring his pieces 
to the rail-fence. He was unwieldy by cor- 
pulence, and overcome with heat and fatigue. 
His men had been scattered from the sum- 
mit of Bunker's Hill, where the enemy's shot 
had taken tremendous effect, as it was sup- 
posed to be strongly fortified. 



The Second Assault , and its Repulse. 75 

THE SECOND ASSAULT, AND ITS RE- 
PULSE. 

The enemy rallied for a second attack. 
Though they had sorely suffered, and some 
few of the officers were reluctant to renew 
the fatal effort, the large body, like the Gen- 
eral, would have yielded to death in any form 
of horror before they would have allowed a 
return to be carried to England that they 
had given up the contested field to those 
whom they had always described as cowards. 
At this crisis 400 fresh men came over from 
Boston to repair the British loss, and Dr. 
Jeffries, of Boston, accompanied them as sur- 
geon. The regulars, a second time, steadily 
advanced, and, with the stoic apathy induced 
by a battle-field, they even piled up the bodies 
of their slaughtered comrades as breastworks 
for their own protection. Their artillery was 
now drawn up by the road which divided the 
tongue of land on the Mystic from the Hill, 
to within 900 feet of the rail-fence. The 
object was to bring it on a line with the 
redoubt, and to open a way for the infantry. 
It was during this second assault that Charles- 



76 The Battle ofBimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

town was set on fire. Probably a double pur- 
pose was intended in this act : first, that the 
smoke might cover the advance of the enemy ; 
and second, to dislodge some of the provin- 
cials, who, from the shelter of the houses, had 
annoyed the British left wing. General Howe 
sent over to Burgoyne and Clinton the order 
to fire the town ; and the order was fulfilled 
by carcasses thrown from Copp's Hill, which, 
aided by some marines who landed from the 
" Somerset," completed the work of desolation. 
The fall of the meeting-house spire made a 
transient spectacle. The old sites, where the 
first settlers reared their common block-house 
for their worship, their stores, and their de- 
fence, on the old town hill, over 200 dwellings, 
among them that of the founder of the wil- 
derness College, and the library of Dr. Mather, 
shared in the ruin. 

The provincials were prepared, at least in 
heart and pluck, for the renewed attack. 
They had orders to reserve their fire till the 
enemy were within six rods, and then to take 
deadly aim. As before, the shot of the enemy 
was mostly ineffectual, ranging far above the 
heads of the provincials. Still, some of our 



The Second Assault^ and its Repulse. 77 

privates fell, and Colonels Brewer, Nixon, 
and Buckminster, and Major Moore, were 
wounded, the last mortally, crying out in his 
death-thirst for water, which could not be 
obtained nearer than the Neck, whither two 
of his men went to seek it. The British 
stood for a time, the moments of which were 
hours, the deadly discharge which was poured 
upon them as they passed the measured line, 
while whole ranks, officers and men, fell in 
heaps. General Howe stood in the thickest 
of the fight, wrought up to a desperate deter- 
mination. For a time he was almost alone, 
his aids-de-camp, and many other officers of 
his staff, lying wounded or dead. But though 
he would not lead a second retreat, he was 
compelled to follow it, and to hear the renewed 
shout of victory from the patriot band who 
had weighed the choice between death and 
subjection. Thus the British were twice 
fairly and completely driven from the Hill. 
There were at the time candid and generous 
men in their army on the spot, and others 
who from Boston were watching with their 
glasses every incident of the action, who 
made the deserved acknowledgment to the 



78 The Battle of Bimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

prowess of the provincials, in admitting the 
repeated repulse of the assailants. Men of 
the same magnanimity in England, after pos- 
sessing themselves of the facts as thoroughly 
as possible from the information transmitted, 
and from interviews with mutilated victims 
of the engagement, also paid the same tribute 
to the defenders of their native soil. But 
these concessions of candor to the demands 
of truth were exceptional. The transition 
was too violent from what had been the esti- 
mate and report of the courage and military 
efficiency of the provincials, to a readiness 
to admit, unreduced and uncolored, the actual 
incidents of the day. Contemporary and 
even more recent English histories give wholly 
inadequate representations. Even Burke — 
if, as is probable, he wrote the account in the 
" Annual Register " — recognizes only one 
repulse, and this only in allowing that the 
regulars " were thrown into some disorder." 

THE THIRD ASSAULT, AND ITS SUCCESS. 

But now the fortunes of the day were to 
be reversed, so far, and so far only, as to 



The Third Assault, and its Success. 79 

attach the bare name of victory to the side 
of the assailants, and to give them the pos- 
session of a field which would have been 
scarce too large for the burial of their fallen 
comrades. The provincials encouraged them- 
selves with the hope that the two repulses 
which had compelled the regulars to retire 
with such loss would deter them from a re- 
newed attack. At least, it seemed as if there 
might be such a protraction of the issue as 
would allow of recuperation and reinforce- 
ment of the men and the works on the Hill. 
It came to the knowledge of the provincials 
that some of the British officers did remon- 
strate against leading their men to another 
butchery, but their remonstrance was disdain- 
fully repelled by others. During the second 
assault, a provincial, with incautious loudness 
of speech, had declared that the ammunition 
was exhausted, and he had been overheard 
by some of the regulars. General Clinton, 
who from Copp's Hill had witnessed the two 
repulses of His Majesty's troops with burning 
mortification, took a boat and crossed the 
Charles as a volunteer, bringing with him 
added reinforcements. A new method of 



8o The Battle of Bimkei-'s \Breed's\ Hill. 

attack was now determined upon. General 
Howe having discovered that weak point, the 
space between the breastwork and the rail- 
fence, now led the left wing, and resolved to 
apply the main strength of the assault against 
the redoubt and the breastwork, particularly 
to rake the latter with the artillery from the 
left, while he disguised this purpose by a 
feigned show of force at the rail-fence. 

The regulars now divested themselves of 
their heavy knapsacks, some of them even of 
their coats. They were ordered to stand the 
fire of the provincials, and then to make a 
resolute charge at the point of the bayonet. 
The three facts last mentioned, viz., the 
knowledge by the enemy that the provincials 
had spent their ammunition, the encourage- 
ment of the presence of General Clinton, and 
the discovery of the weak point in the defences, 
all contributed to nerve the British to a third 
effort. 

While these hostile preparations were in 
progress, the little band of devoted patriots, 
— Prescott afterwards said that less than 200 
men were left in the redoubt, — exhausted 
almost to complete prostration by their long 



The Third Assault^ and its Success, 8i 

and imrefreshed toil of the night and the 
bloody work of the noonday, had time to sum- 
mon their remaining energies, to resolve that 
the last blow should be the heaviest, to think 
upon the glory of their cause, and the laurels 
they should for ever wear. The few remain- 
ing rounds of powder were distributed by 
Prescott himself. The very few and favored 
men whose muskets were furnished with 
bayonets — and there were not fifty of them 
— stood ready to repel the charge to the 
utmost ; and those who were without this 
defence, as well. as without ammunition, re- 
solved to club their muskets and wield their 
heavy stocks, while the ferocity of despair 
strung every nerve. Even the loose stones 
of the intrenchments were gladly secured as 
the last stay of an unflinching resolution, 

A body of reinforcements, fresh and reso- 
lute, and provided with bayonets, might even 
then have forced the regulars to a third and 
final retreat ; but, as before remarked, un- 
avoidable confusion prevailed in the Ameri- 
can camp. The Neck of land, the only line 
of communication, wore a terrible aspect to 
raw recruits, who had to dodge the missiles as 
6 



82 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill 

they passed over it, and could at best trans- 
port only their own bodies. General Ward 
was without staff-officers to convey orders. 
The regiments which had been stationed 
along the route, to wait further commands, 
were overlooked. Colonel Gardiner, though 
thus left without orders, panting to join the 
strife, led 300 men to Bunker's Hill, where 
Putnam first set them upon intrenching, but 
soon urged them to action at the lines. The 
Colonel commanded his men to drop their 
tools and follow. He was leading them to the 
post of dangerous service when he received 
a mortal wound in the groin from a musket- 
ball. As he was borne off the field, he bade 
his men to conquer or die. Deprived of their 
leader, but few of them engaged in the action. 
His son, a youth of nineteen, met him as he 
was carried by, and, overcome with grief, 
sought to aid him, but the father commanded 
him to march to his duty. Colonel Scam- 
mans remained on Cobble Hill, but a detach- 
ment of Gerrish's regiment, under their 
Danish adjutant, Ferbiger, rushed toward the 
fence. A few of the Americans occupied the 
two or three houses on the slope of Breed's 



The Third Assault, and its Success. ^^ 

Hill, and annoyed, for a time, the left flank of 
the enemy. 

The artillery of the British effected its 
murderous purpose, raking the whole interior 
of the breastwork, driving its defenders into 
the redoubt, sending the balls there after 
them through the open sally-port, and reduc- 
ing the area of the conflict. Lieutenant Pres- 
cott, a nephew of the commander, had his arm 
disabled, and was told by his uncle to content 
himself with encouraging his men. But, hav- 
ing succeeded in loading his musket, he was 
passing the sally-port to seek a rest from 
which to fire it, when he was killed by a can- 
non-ball. It was clear that the intrenchments 
could no longer be held ; but the resolution to 
yield them only in the convulsion of a last 
effort nerved every patriot arm. 

The British officers were seen to goad on 
some of their reluctant and shrinking men 
with blows from their swords. It was for 
them now to receive the fire, and to reserve 
their own till they could follow it by a thrust 
of the bayonet. Each shot of the provincials 
was true to its aim. Colonel Abercrombie, 
Majors Williams and Spendlove fell. General 



84 The Battle of Bimker's {Breed's] Hill 

Howe was slightly wounded in the foot. 
Hand to hand and face to face were ex- 
changed the last savage hostilities of that 
day. Only a ridge of loose-heaped earth 
divided the grappling combatants, whose feet 
were slipping in the gory sand, while they 
joined in the mortal strife. When the enem}' 
found themselves received with stones, the 
missiles of a more ancient warfare, they knew 
that their work was nearly done, as they 
now contended with unarmed men. Young 
Richardson, of the Royal Irish, was the first 
who scaled the parapet, and he fell, as did 
likewise the first line of those that mounted 
it, among whom Major Pitcairn, who had 
shed the first blood at Lexington, was shot 
by a negro soldier. It was only when the 
redoubt was crowded by the enemy and the 
defenders in one promiscuous throng, and 
fresh assailants were on all sides pouring into 
it, that Prescott, no less, but even more, a 
hero, when he spoke the reluctant word, 
ordered a retreat. A longer struggle would 
have been folly, not courage. Some of the 
men had splintered their musket-stocks in 
fierce blows ; nearly all were defenceless, yet 



The Third Assault, and its Success. 85 

v/as there that left within them, in a daunt- 
less soul, which might still help their country 
at its need. The few exceptional cases of 
cowardice or weakness, which presented them- 
selves as the catastrophe closed, demand no 
apology, no mention even, when no one could 
merit the epithet of craven who had stood 
as more than an onlooker through that day. 

Prescott gave the crowning proof of his 
devoted and magnanimous spirit, when he 
cooled the heat of his own brain, and bore 
the bitter pang in his own heart, by command- 
ing an orderly and still resisting retreat. He 
was the hero of that blood-dyed summit, the 
midnight leader and guard, the morning sen- 
tinel, the orator of the opening strife, the 
cool and deliberate overseer of the whole 
struggle, the well-skilled marksman of the 
exact distance and the point of aim at which 
a shot was certain death ; he was the trusted 
chief in whose bright eye and steady nerve 
men read their duty ; and when conduct, 
skill, and courage could do no more, he was 
the merciful deliverer of the remnant. Pres- 
cott was the hero of the day, and wherever 
its tale is told, let him be its chieftain. 



S6 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] HilL 

Whose statue other than his should grace 
the monumental summit beside, not beneath, 
that of Warren, the "Volunteer" ? 

The troops still left in the redoubt now 
fought their straggling escape through the 
encircling enemy, turning their faces towards 
the foe, while they retreated with backward 
steps. Gridley, who had planned and de- 
fended the works, received a wound, and was 
borne off. Warren was among the last to 
leave the redoubt, and at a short distance 
from it a musket ball through his head killed 
him instantly. When the corpse of that illus- 
trious patriot was afterwards identified by 
Dr. Jeffries, General Howe thought that this 
one victim well repaid the loss of numbers 
of his mercenaries. It appears from the 
recently published memoir of Dr. John War- 
ren, the brother of the General, and then a 
young physician at Salem, that it was several 
days before he was certified of the sad afltlic- 
tion to himself. He came to Cambridge the 
next morning, and learned only that his 
brother was missing. In endeavoring to pass 
a sentinel at the new British lines, he received 
from the thrust of his bayonet a wound which 
he bore through life. 



The Third Assault^ and its Success. 87 

It is not strange that, both in English and 
American reports and hasty narratives of that 
day, and in some subsequent notices of it, 
Warren should have been represented as the 
commander of the provincial forces. His 
influence and his patriotism were equally well 
known to friend and foe. There is no more 
delicate task than that of dividing among 
many heroes the honors of a battle-field, and 
the rewards which fame apportions for devoted 
services. Yet the high-minded will always 
appreciate the integrity of the motive which 
seeks to distinguish between the places and 
the modes of service, where those who alike 
love their country enjoy, at their own peril, 
the opportunity of winning the laurels of 
heroism and devotion. The council chamber 
and the forum and the high place in the public 
assembly offer to the patriot statesman the 
scenes and occasions for securing remem- 
brance and honor for his name. The battle- 
field must retain the same appropriate privilege 
for the patriot soldier, whose skill and tactics, 
courage and inspiring fervor, can plan and 
guide a critical enterprise, for there alone can 
he earn his own wreath. Let the chivalry and 



88 The Battle of Bimker's \Breeds\ Hill, 

the magnanimity of Warren for ever fill a 
brilliant page in our revolutionary history. 
But let not a partial homage attach to him the 
especial honor to which another has a rightful 
claim. It was no part of his pure purpose, in 
mingling with his countrymen on that hill, to 
monopolize its honors, and to figure as its 
hero. It is enough that he stood among 
equals, without selfish rivalry, in devotion and 
patriotism. Let it be remembered that he 
did not approve the measure of thus challeng- 
ing a superior enemy with such insufficient 
preparation and means. The more honorable, 
therefore, was his self-sacrifice in giving the 
whole energy of his will to falsify the misgiv- 
ings of his judgment. Here, then, is his claim, 
which, when fully met, leaves the honors of 
that summit to the miUtary leader of the 
heroic band. 

While such was the issue at the redoubt, 
the left wing, under Putnam, aided by some 
reinforcements which had arrived too late, 
was making a vigorous stand at the rail-fence. 
But the retreat at the redoubt compelled the 
resolute defenders to yield with slow and re- 
luctant baitings, as their flank was opened to 



The Third Assault^ and its Success. 89 

the enemy. Putnam pleaded and cursed, — a 
misuse of emphasis for which he afterwards 
humbled himself before his puritan church, — 
he commanded and implored the scattering 
bands to rally, and he vowed that he would 
win them the victory. His great and absorb- 
ing purpose through the whole day was to 
fortify Bunker's Hill. It is doubtful whether 
he was at all in the redoubt during the action, 
though the painter Trumbull, perhaps from 
Connecticut partiality, drew him as the com- 
mander there. To effect his object, he passed 
and repassed between Cambridge and Charles- 
town, sending for tools to the redoubt, and 
endeavoring to rally the flying, even when 
there was no longer a hope. So completely 
was he identified with the consuming zeal for 
fortifying the higher hill in the rear, that the 
traditionary rehearsals from the lips of some 
survivors represented him as on horseback, 
buried under and surrounded by heaps of 
intrenching tools, enough for a cart load. 
His furious ardor may, or may not, have 
needed the control of a cool, deliberating 
judgment, and of that prime essential of the 
soldier which is called "conduct." His cour- 



90 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

age was unquestionable. He is here fairly 
presented by the writer, according as a care- 
ful examination of authorities, and a review 
of widely different estimates and judgments 
of him by others assign to him his share in 
inspiriting a patriotic enterprise. 

General Pomeroy likewise implored the dis- 
integrated forces to rally ; but in vain. The 
last resistance at the rail-fence was of the 
utmost service, as it prevented the enemy 
from cutting off the retreat of the provin- 
cials who straggled back, each, for the most 
part, his own leader, towards Cambridge. 
Yet the enemy were in no condition to pur- 
sue, as they were alike exhausted, and were 
content with the little patch of ground which 
they had so dearly purchased. The provin- 
cials retreated to Cambridge by the marsh 
road, and by the higher route over Winter 
Hill, able to rescue only one of the six pieces 
of artillery which they had brought to the 
field. The battle had occupied about two 
hours, the provincials retreating about five 
o'clock. The British lay on their arms all 
night at Bunker's Hill, discharging their pieces 
against the Americans, who were safely en- 



The Third Assault, and its Success. 91 

camped upon Prospect Hill, at the distance 
of a mile. Between the two positions, at 
the right, was a slight elevation, known as 
Ploughed Hill, because under cultivation. 
This was afterwards called Mount Benedict, 
as the site of the Ursuline Convent, and has 
a humiliating history. Ploughed Hill and 
Prospect Hill are now both reducing their 
summits to raise the adjacent low lands. 

Prescott, with garments pierced and rent, 
hastened to headquarters to make return of 
the orders he had received. He was indig- 
nant at the loss of the ground, and implored 
General Ward to commit to him three fresh 
regiments, promising that with them he would 
at once win back what had been sacrificed. 
But he had already honorably done all that 
his country might demand of him in that first 
trial. He bitterly complained that the rein- 
forcements, which might have given to his 
triumph the completeness of a victory, had 
failed him. A year afterwards, when he was 
in the American camp at New York, he was 
informed how narrowly he had escaped with 
his life. A British sergeant who was brought 
into the camp, on meeting there with Pres- 



92 The Battle of Bunker's {Breed's] Hill. 

cott, called him by name. Prescott inquired 
how or where he had known him. The man 
replied that he knew him well, and that his 
acquaintance began at the battle in Charles- 
town. Prescott had there been pointed out 
to him as the commander, and in the first two 
acts had been singled out by him with a 
deliberate aim. Though Prescott's position 
at each time was such as to convince the 
sergeant that the shot would be fatal, he was 
unharmed. On the third assault, impelled 
by the same purpose, he had charged Pres- 
cott at the point of the bayonet ; but the 
strong arm and the sword of the commander 
thrust aside the weapon, and the baflfled ser- 
geant judged him to be invulnerable. 



THE RECKONING. 

The number of the provincials in the whole 
action of the day, including the occasional 
reinforcements, and those who came only to 
cover the retreat, did not exceed 4,000. Of 
these 1 1 5 were killed, 305 were wounded, and 
30 were taken prisoners, making our whole 
loss 450. Prescott's regiment suffered most 
severely. 



The Reckoning. 93 

The whole British loss was estimated by the 
Provincial Congress, on their best information, 
at 1,500, and as returned by Gage, was 1,054, 
among them' 13 commissioned officers killed, 
and 70 wounded. Of the killed were i lieu- 
tenant-colonel, 2 majors, and 7 captains. 
Loud and agonizing was the wailing in Bos- 
ton, when through that night and all the next 
Sunday boats, drays, and stretchers, and all 
the means of transport, were put to service 
to carry the wounded and the dying from the 
fearful scene. The hospitals were crowded 
with the sufferers, and many places designed 
for quite other purposes were put to that 
exigent use. The sympathies of the inhabi- 
tants of the town were engaged alike for 
friends and foes. The following brief extract 
from a letter from Mr. Grant, one of the sur- 
geons of the British army in Boston, to a 
friend in Westminster, written on the sixth 
day after the battle, revives the realities of 
the occasion. " I have scarce had time suffi- 
cient to eat my meals, therefore you must 
expect but a few lines. I have been up two 
nights, assisted by four mates, dressing our 
men of the wounds they received the last 



94 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed^s] Hill. 

engagement. Many of the wounded are 
daily dying, and many must have both legs 
amputated. The provincials had either ex- 
hausted their ball, or they were determined 
that every wound should prove mortal. Their 
muskets were charged with old nails and 
angular pieces of iron, and from most of our 
men being wounded in the legs, we are in- 
clined to believe it was their design, not wish- 
ing to kill the men, but to leave them as 
burdens on us, to exhaust our provisions and 
engage our attention, as well as to intimidate 
the rest of the soldiery." 

The stir and business of the British forces 
on their occupancy of the heights which they 
had so dearly won may best be gathered from 
Howe's Orderly Book, under the date of the 
day following. 

"General Howe's Orders. 

Heights of Charlestown, 
June iSth, at nine o'clock morning. 

The troops will encamp as soon as the equipage 
can be brought up. 

Tents and provisions may be expected when 
the tide admits of transporting them to this side. 



The Reckoning, 95 

The corps to take the duty at the intrench- 
ment near Charlestown Neck, alternately. The 
whole (those on the last-mentioned duty excepted) 
to furnish the third of their numbers for work, 
with officers and non-commissioned officers in pro- 
portion, and be relieved every four hours. 

The parties for work to carry their arms, and 
lodge them securely while on that duty. 

General Howe expects that all officers will 
exert themselves to prevent the men from strag- 
gling, quitting their companies or platoons, and, 
on pain of death, no man to be guilty of the shame- 
ful and infamous practice of pillaging in the 
deserted houses. 

When men are sent for water, not less than 
twelve, with a non-commissioned officer, to be sent 
on that duty. 

The 47 th Regiment to continue at the post 
they now occupy. The soldiers are by no means 
to cut down trees, unless ordered. 

General Howe hopes the troops will in every 
instance show an attention to discipline and regu- 
larity on this ground, equal to the bravery and 
intrepidity he, with the greatest satisfaction, ob- 
served they displayed so remarkably yesterday. 
He takes this opportunity of expressing his public 
testimony to the gallantry and good conduct of 
the officers under his command during the action, 



g6 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

to which he in a great measure ascribes the suc- 
cess of the day. He considers particularly in this 
light the distinguished efforts of the Generals 
Clinton and Pigot. 

The corps of Light Infantry will relieve the 
Grenadiers at the advanced intrenchment this 
evening, at seven. 

When the 5 2d Regiment encamps, an officer 
and twenty men of that corps will remain at the 
post they now occupy." 

"General Orders. 
Head-quarters, Boston, 19th June, 1775. 

The Commander-in-chief returns his most grate- 
ful thanks to Major-General Howe for the extraor- 
dinary exertion of his military abilities on the 17th 
instant. He returns his thanks also to Major- 
General Clinton and Brigadier-General Pigot for 
the share they took in the success of the day, as 
well as to Lieutenant-Colonels Nesbit, Abercrom- 
bie. Gunning, and Clarke, Majors Butler, Williams, 
Bruce, Tupper, Spendlove, Smelt, and Mitchell, 
and the rest of the officers and soldiers, who, by 
remarkable efforts of courage and gallantry, over- 
came every disadvantage, and drove the rebels 
from their redoubt and strongholds on the heights 
of Charlestown, and gained a complete victory." 



The Reckoning. 97 

"June 27th, 1775. 
The preservation of the few houses left in 
Charlestown (as much as possible) unimpaired, 
being an important object, any of the soldiers 
detected in future in attempting shamefully to 
purloin any part of these buildings will assuredly 
be punished most severely. The General con- 
siders such instances of devastation and irregu- 
larity a disgrace to discipline." 

But though the sword was lifted against our 
fathers by their own brethren, anci in a cause 
which we must pronounce to have been un- 
righteous and tyrannical, we feel impelled to 
pay a just tribute to the bravery and gallan- 
try of the British officers and soldiers upon 
the field. To climb boldly and march for- 
ward, as they did thrice, and bare their 
bosoms to the weapons of desperate men, was 
a trial of their prowess which allows us to 
withhold from them no praise or glory which 
we give to our patriots, save that belonging 
to those who were the champions of the better 
cause. The highest honor which we can 
bestow upon the heroism of the enemy, is, in 
regretting that the King and his ministers 
found such devoted servants. 
7 



98 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

THE FRUITS OF THE PATRIOT 
STRUGGLE. 

Now, if it were to be affirmed that the 
intrenching and the daring, though desperate, 
defence of Breed's Hill was the most critical, 
or, at least, the most important, action of our 
Revolutionary War, the assertion might be 
set down to the account of a rhetorical exalta- 
tion, to local partiality, or to an ill-proportioned 
estimate of other conflicts. Rival claimants 
might arise as the champions of the fame of 
our other battle-fields. Yet, without a word 
or a figure of exaggeration, the battle of June 
17th may be ranked as chief in importance in 
the calendar of our fights. The whole pro- 
tracted struggle was decisively influenced 
through its seven years by this, its initiatory 
contest. The battle was fought by the pro- 
vincials in earnest, with determined spirit, 
with proud success, though not with tempo- 
rary victory ; and therefore it gave the impulse 
of a good beginning to the whole conduct of 
the war. The risks of the enterprise were 
fearful, almost appalling, as seen by our 
wisest and boldest counsellors. But they 



The Fruits of the Patriot Struggle, 99 

counted the cost up to that critical point at 
which high-souled and resolved men know 
that if they deliberate and hesitate any fur- 
ther, they lose their heroism in fondling their 
discretion. Let us make a brief review of the 
accomplished effects of the battle. 

It accomplished what, in all cases of strife 
and discord, it iS very needful, yet not always 
easy, to bring fully into decision, — it drew a 
line of division, no longer to be blurred, 
between the two contending parties, and 
brought them to a positive issue. There were 
then several links of union between England 
and her American provinces, formed by the 
various orders, classes, and coteries, gathered 
especially in this neighborhood. Some of our 
most honored and disinterested countrymen, 
and some of the British officers, engaged with 
protracted shrinking and with extreme reluc- 
tance in the hostilities. We had among us 
not only Tories and Repubhcans, Monarchists 
and Sons of Liberty, but timid and cautious 
hesitants, and attached friends to the restricted 
exercise of kingly, in opposition to democratic, 
authority. There were moderate and immod- 
erate men of both parties, neutral and luke- 



100 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] HilL 

warm doubters of no party. While reading 
the inner history of the period, we readily 
imagine the thousand social ties and domestic 
relations, the civilities of neighborhood and 
the common interest in the land across the 
water, which might well make it a difficult 
thing, a work requiring time, and even blood, 
to separate the people of this single province 
into two parties distinct at every point, so that 
they might face each other as enemies. Had 
it not been for the skirmish at Lexington 
and Concord, it is probable that matters 
might have remained quiet a little time 
longer, and that the colonists might have 
wasted many more words of petition upon 
the ministry. But the affair of the 17th of 
June at once put a stop to any further halting 
between two opinions. 

Again, that action was of primary impor- 
tance from its nerving influence upon the 
patriots, who, unknown to themselves, had 
before them a war of weary protraction and 
exhausting drain, partaking largely of re- 
verses and discouragements. They learned 
this day to what they were equal in the confi- 
dence that God was on their side, making their 



The Fruits of the Patriot Struggle. loi 

cause just and good. That work of a sum- 
mer's night was worth its cost to them. 
They lacked discipHne, artillery, bayonets, 
powder and ball, food ; and, the greatest want 
of all, they lacked the delicious draught of 
pure, cool water for their labor-worn and 
heat-exhausted frames. They found that des- 
peration would supply the place of discipHne ; 
that the blunt end of a musket, wielded with 
strong arms, might be as deadly as the thrust 
of a bayonet, and that a heavy stone might 
level an assailant as well as a charge of pow- 
der. As for food and water, the hunger they 
were compelled to bear unrelieved, and they 
cooled their brows only by the thick, heavy 
drops which poured before the sun. Yet it 
was their opening combat, and proudly did 
they bear away its laurels even upon their 
backs, which the failure of ammunition and 
reinforcements compelled them through part 
of their retreat to turn to the enemy. They 
did show their backs once to those who had 
already twice indulged them with the same 
spectacle ; and, if they retreated, it was not 
in abandonment of their cause, but that they 
micfht save their faces for later and bolder 



102 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

opportunities of confronting the foe. Their 
opening combat decided the spirit and the 
hope of all their subsequent campaigns. 
They had freed themselves during the en- 
gagement from all that human reluctance 
which they had heretofore felt in turning 
deadly weapons against the breasts of former 
friends, yes, even of kinsmen. On that emi- 
nence, the first bright image of liberty of a 
free native land kindled the eyes of those who 
were expiring in their gore ; and the image 
passed between the living and the dying to 
seal the covenant, that the hope of the one, 
or the fate of the other, should unite them 
here or hereafter. 

It was the report of that battle, which, trans- 
mitted by swift couriers over the length and 
breadth of the continent, would everywhere 
prepare the spirit to follow it up with deter- 
mined resistance to every future act of aggres- 
sion. How can we exaggerate the relative 
importance of this day's action .•* Did it not, 
in fact, not only open, but make the contest, 
dividing into two parties not only those deter- 
mined for the ministry or for enfranchisement, 
but also all timid, hesitating, reluctant neu- 



The Fruits of the Patriot Struggle. 103 

trals ? It was impossible after this to avoid 
taking a side. It rendered all reconciliation 
impossible, till it should offer itself in the 
shape of independence. It echoed the gather- 
ing cry that brought together our people from 
their farms and workshops, to learn the terrible 
art which grows more merciful only as it is 
more ferociously, that is, skilfully, pursued. 
The day needs no rhetoric to magnify it in 
our revolutionary annals. When its sun went 
down, the provincials had parted with all fear, 
hesitation, and reluctance. They found that 
it was easy to fight. The awful roar of the 
death-dealing enginery associated itself in 
their minds with all their wrongs, and all their 
hopes, and with the sweet word of liberty. 
The pen with which petitions had been writ- 
ten, they found to be, for its use, a child's toy. 
Words of remonstrance left no impression on 
the air. There was but one resource. From 
the village homes and farm-houses around, 
amid the encouraging exhortations, as well 
as the tearful prayers of their families, the 
yeomen took from their chimney-stacks the 
familiar and well-proved weapons of a life in 
the woods, and felt for the first time, not 



I04 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

indeed what it was to have a country, but 
what they had to do to keep it. 

Another token of the relative importance 
of this day's conflict was the effect which the 
announcement of it in England produced 
upon the ministry and the people. An 
infatuated cabinet had provoked the war 
under the grossest misapprehension of the 
character and courage of the inhabitants of 
this province. An infatuated Parliament 
listened approvingly to speeches ratifying the 
measures of that ministry as of easy enforce- 
ment. The local information of our former 
governor, Pownall, the philosophy of Burke, 
and the tender appeals of Lord Chatham, had 
in vain pleaded with lords and commons that 
only conciliatory measures could avail with a 
race of men, Englishmen themselves, the 
descendants of exiles who had sought a heri- 
tage of freedom in a tamed wilderness. The 
last three royal governors of IMassachusetts 
had represented the provincials as under the 
control of a few ambitious leaders, dema- 
gogues, and revolutionists, who, by exciting 
speeches, cajoled and flattered the duped 
people. All that needed to be done by Parlia- 



The Fruits of the Patriot Struggle, 105 

ment was to silence these fustian leaders. 
The principal cajoling proved to have been 
practised on the English people, who had 
been told that one regiment of the King's 
troops would sweep the provincials off the 
continent. The battle gave them a simple 
Rule of Three. If so many of his Majesty's 
soldiers had been necessary to reduce the 
square feet of ground on the peninsula of 
Charlestown, how many would be needed to 
sweep the continent } 

General Gage's account of the battle, ac- 
knowledging the loss of 226 killed and 828 
wounded, was received in London, July 25th. 
While the ministry received with dismay this 
official intelligence, and kept it back from 
publication, many private letters accompany- 
ing it in its transit anticipated with exaggera- 
tions its humiliating details. These being 
made public, the ministry gave forth their 
own version in the '' Gazette " in as favorable 
a tone as was possible, from the despatches 
of Gage, Howe, and Burgoyne. The last of 
these wrote to Lord Stanley that " the day 
ended with glory." General Gage wrote to 
Lord Dartmouth, the head of the War 



io6 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed^s] Hill. 

Department : " The rebels are not the despi- 
cable rabble too many suppose them to be ; 
and I find it owing to a military spirit encour- 
aged among them for a few years past, joine(i 
with an uncommon degree of zeal and enthu- 
siasm, that they are otherwise." 

On the reception in England of the ac- 
counts of the battle by the provincials, with 
their comments and resolves for the future, 
the English people were excited by varying 
feelings of sympathy for us, or vengeful hate 
against us, and either poured forth contempt 
and complaint against the ministry, or de- 
manded of them more violence. The revenue 
which was promised to the exchequer of Great 
Britain from the taxation of the colonists 
was found to involve enormous charges for 
its collection, — in the cost of sending regi- 
ments of its own subjects, and of foreign mer- 
cenaries, with munitions of war, coals, fagots, 
vinegar, porter, hay, vegetables, sheep, oxen, 
horses, and clothing — a good proportion of 
which fell into the hands of privateering pro- 
vincials — across three thousand miles of 
water. In the words of the old saying, "A 
great deal of good money was sent after what 



The Fruits of the Patriot Struggle. 107 

was bad." Highlanders were enlisted with 
the promise of receiving farms here " whose 
owners had been driven into the interior." 

The provincial account of the battle, dated 
July 25th, was sent to Arthur Lee, the agent 
in London, who caused it to be published. 
In September, three pestiferous vessels from 
here arrived at English ports, with sick and 
mutilated officers and men, and with the 
widows and children of the slain, wretched 
spectacles and wretched sufferers. 

The conduct of the battle on the part of the 
British generals was the subject of criticism, 
censure, and ridicule from the authorities and 
the people. Ingenious plans were set forth 
by which the British, unscathed, might have 
routed or entrapped the provincials, as if they 
had been so many lambs. 

The despatches which had been repaired 
and transmitted to General Gage, directing 
his future movements, were accompanied by 
others, recalling him and committing the com- 
mand to Howe. The latter, unmanned and 
dispirited, 'was to fare no better than did his 
predecessor. Remonstrances, petitions, and 
public meetings in England in opposition to 



io8 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill, 

the war, the reluctance of soldiers to enlist, 
the high bounties paid, and the increasing 
number of the avowed and secret friends of 
the Americans, were other effects of our 
opening battle. 

The British strongly fortified both Bun- 
ker's and Breed's Hills, posting their advanced 
guards upon the Neck. Thus they had two 
peninsulas and a little more room, offering 
them one great advantage, but no more. The 
cool heights of Charlestown were a refuge in 
the hot weather from the deadly atmosphere 
of Boston, which was one vast hospital. But 
the enemy had double labor and anxiety in 
defending their works against an insulting, 
vexatious, and ever-watchful foe quite near 
to them, and in the ensuing winter were 
exposed to severe sufferings from the intense 
cold and drivino: snowstorms, with insufficient 
shelter and no fuel. Nor did the possession 
of Charlestown at all increase their faciUties 
for obtaining fresh provisions, in which the 
interior country abounded. They had had 
little of the kind since the affair at Lexington. 
Handbills were printed at Cambridge, and sent 
floating on the wind across the lines into the 



The Fruits of the Patriot Struggle. 109 



rebel camp, taunting them with the contrast 
in their bills of fare. Thus : — 



Prospect Hill. 

1. Seven dollars a month. 

2. Fresh provisions, and in 

plenty. 

3. Health. 

4. Freedom, ease, affluence, 

and a good farm. 



Bunker's Hill. 

1. Threepence a day. 

2. Rotten salt pork. 

3. The scurvy. 

4. Slavery, beggary, and 

want. 



A British officer, writing from Boston, July 
25, to a friend in London, says, they felt 
themselves worse off than the rebels, like a few 
children in a large crowd, insulted and men- 
aced, and dreading an attack when the long 
nights came. He adds : " They know our 
situation as well as we do ourselves, from the 
villains that are left in town, who acquaint 
them with all our proceedings, making signals 
by night with gunpowder, and at day out of 
the church steeples. About three weeks ago, 
three fellows were taken out of one of the 
latter [the West Church], who confessed that 
they had been so employed for seven days. 
Another was caught last week swimming 
over to the rebels with one of their general's 
passes in his pocket. He will be hanged in 



no The Battle of Bimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

a day or two." This officer and his friends 
would have had many more such tricks to 
report had their eyes been sharper. 

It would be of interest, were this the place 
for it, to sketch in some detail the experiences 
and the anxieties of both armies during the 
heats of the summer, the mellowness of the 
autumn, and the severities of the winter that 
followed upon the collision between them that 
has just been reviewed. As one in that series 
of miscalculations and blunders which char- 
acterized the whole conduct of the military 
leaders here, as of the parliamentary leaders 
in England, the successor of Gage failed to 
possess himself of the heights on the other 
side of Boston before Washington occupied 
them, and held the British army under his 
guns. It was the middle of March. Our 
great chief was willing to allow General Howe 
a few days to pack up and take his fleet to 
other waters, because any molestation of him 
would have involved injury to the people of 
Boston and their property. 

It is pleasant to close this rehearsal of a 
strife, amid scenes now smiling in all the love- 
liness and prosperity of a century of peace, by 



The Fruits of the Patriot Struggle. 1 1 1 

reference to a symbol more expressive even 
than that of a sword beaten into a plough- 
share. When the first beams of the morning 
exposed to the view of the enemy the work 
which Colonel Prescott had been doing in the 
night, the sloop-of-war " Falcon," in command 
cf Captain Linzee, lying in the river, poured 
forth with her consorts the rattling shot in 
bombarding it. The grandson of the Ameri- 
can commander, the late WilHam Hickling 
Prescott, the accompHshed and distinguished 
historian, and a man honored and endeared to 
all who knew him, married the granddaughter 
of Captain Linzee. For many years the swords 
of these two officers, crossed peacefully, orna- 
mented one of the friezes of the library of the 
historian. And now, with an appropriate in- 
scription for the legacy, they grace an apart- 
ment of the library of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society. 



112 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 



NOTE. 

The writer of the preceding pages indulges here 
in some personal references, slight as they con- 
cern himself, more important as they relate to 
others. 

For a period of thirty consecutive years, 1840— 
1869, he, being then a resident of Charlestown, 
stood each year, on the morning and evening of 
the anniversary of the battle, on the heights which 
it made memorable, walked the grounds and re- 
viewed the surroundings of the scene. On the 
first of those years, — sixty-five years having 
elapsed since the conflict, — and for a few that 
followed, the historic scene in many of its interest- 
ing features was comparatively unchanged. On 
the top and skirts of Bunker's Hill there were but 
few dwellings amid its open pasture-grounds, and 
on the northern and western parts of it the ridges 
and trenches, the lines and the bastions of the 
elaborate fortifications made by the British while 
they held it, were easily traceable. Moulton's 
Hillj, at the entrance upon the bridge to Chelsea, 
where the regulars landed and lunched, was then 
at its full elevation, and brick-kilns, tan-yards, and 



Note. 



113 



sloughy ground occupied most of the space be- 
tween it and the slope of Breed's Hill. The 
skirts of both Bunker's and Breed's Hill down to 
the shore of the Mystic, were, for the most part, 
in their earlier condition, enabling one to trace 
the relation of the simple defences made by the 
rail-fence, and the breastwork and redoubt. 
There were many points on Breed's Hill from 
which a view was offered of Copp's Hill, and of 
the route of our forces from Cambridge. The 
slopes of Breed's Hill, on all the four sides, which 
have since been wholly removed for streets and 
dwellings, were then as nature left them. The 
Fitchburg, Boston and Maine, and Eastern Rail- 
roads, had not then spanned the river with their 
bridges. When strangers from abroad, and visit- 
ors, asked the writer's company in their outlook 
upon the scene, it had in large measure a self- 
explanatory aspect. He watched diligently the 
spades and picks of the laborers as they removed 
the earth on the sides of the hill. The depth of 
the levelling is indicated now by the height of the 
banks bordering the remnant that makes the site 
of the monument. Many cannon-balls, the mis- 
siles of the British ships and battery, came to light, 
of which the writer picked up two. 

While in 1840, and for a short time afterwards, 
the natural features of the scene and its sur- 
8 



1 1 4 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

roundings were so little changed, there were many 
persons living in the town and its neighborhood 
who had personal knowledge and vivid remem- 
brances of things seen and heard on the memo- 
rable day which laid the town in ashes. Men and 
women, who were not quite fourscore years of age, 
as well as those who were older, who had been 
born and brought up in the town, and had, as 
children, been removed from it by their parents 
on the eve of the battle, to watch it from the 
neighboring hill-tops, and those who had even 
done some service on the day, were still lingering 
here or in the adjoining towns. Of what they had 
themselves seen and known they were interesting 
and trustworthy relators. They were the less so 
as reporters of what they had heard from others. 
Confusion of memory and imagination, of course, 
would in some instances qualify the reliance to 
be given to their narrations. The writer had 
occasion to make allowance for that peculiar 
characteristic of aged and communicative per- 
sons, by which, when they are consulted as oracles 
about wonders and catastrophes, they are apt to 
substitute the remembrances, experiences, and 
narratives of others for their own. Enough there 
were, however, of surviving'actors, witnesses, and 
sharers in the excitements and distresses of that 
day, to give efficient help to one who had its 



Note. 115 

scenes and their surroundings before him, and 
had diligently read its printed and manuscript 
memorials, with the effort to reproduce its reali- 
ties. There was a pathos in the relations of some 
of these aged people, which unerringly distin- 
guished between the impressions written deep in 
the distresses of memory, and those caught by 
the imagination from the tales of others. Those 
who had seen the happy homes of their childhood, 
with their little treasures, melt away in the con- 
flagration j those who had heard the roar of the 
musketry and cannon, and had looked upon the 
wounded borne off to some chance shelter ; those 
who were the first to return impoverished and 
homeless to the scene of ruin, marked by tottering 
chimney-stacks, cellars of rubbish, and charred 
well-sweeps, to reclaim at least their spot of re- 
deemed soil, — might be trusted by one who 
listened to them as speaking the truth. 

The grandparents of Ex-Ma)^ors Timothy 
Thompson Sawyer and Richard Frothingham — 
who are cousins — left their home in Charlestown 
on the evening of the 19th of April, and crossed 
the river into Maiden, thence to look upon the 
wreck of so much that was dear to them. On 
their return to the scene of ruins, their son, 
Timothy Thompson, was the first male child born 
on the spot, Feb. 24, 1777. His -mother lived to 



1 1 6 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed V] Hill. 

enjoy the visit of Lafaj^ette, the laying of the 
corner-stone of the Monument, and the delivery 
of Webster's oration, at its completion, and died in 
1848, in her ninety-third year. The memory of 
the venerable lady held what was not to be found 
in books. The newspapers and posters of the 
time were filled with advertisements of things lost 
or stolen. In many cases members of scattered 
families were, for some time, ignorant of each 
other's whereabouts. 

The many ancient tombs in the burial-hill, with 
their armorial bearings and their extinct names, 
show that a number of families, once resident 
with ample means in the town, have lost their 
places on the list of inhabitants, and left no 
representatives. Such of them as were living at 
the time, driven from their homes and reduced to 
want, never returned again. 

In 1 841, the writer was invited by a military 
company to prepare and deliver an " oration," for 
a celebration, in connection with the civil authori- 
ties, of the anniversary of the battle for that year. 
In undertaking the task, he found to his surprise 
that there was not to be had in print nor in manu- 
script any extended, authentic, and adequate pro- 
duction that might be called a History of the 
Battle, written within a half century after it, by 
any actor or spectator, giving a connected account 



Note. 117 

of the preparation, the conduct and events in 
detail which it involved. Returns, reports, and 
results communicated to the authorities of the 
time, for specific purposes, fragmentary sketches, 
extracts from journals, letters, and newspapers, 
there were in abundance, but no narrative reach- 
ing the standard of an historical monograph. Per- 
haps an exception should be made to the sweep 
of this statement, in a recognition of the earnest 
efforts of the late Colonel Samuel Swett, of Bos- 
ton, who in 18 18 contributed to an edition of 
Humphrey's "Life of General Putnam," "An 
Historical and .Topographical Sketch of Bunker 
Hill Battle." This was prepared while the con- 
tention was waging fiercely among the champions 
of the different names claimed for the chief or 
the divided honors of the command on the 17th of 
June. Colonel Swett twice enlarged his sketch, 
and published it in a pamphlet, with much new 
and valuable matter gathered by his inquiries 
from his military friends and many survivors of 
the field. His laborious and zealous investiga- 
tions were most opportunely pursued ; and their 
results in their last form were made public in 
1826 and 1827, in connection with the then recent 
ceremonies at the laying of the corner-stone of the 
monument. He too, however, was charged with 
exhibiting the spirit, prejudices, and favoritism of 



1 1 8 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] HilL 

a partisan. Though he says that " Colonel Pres- 
cott led the way " from Cambridge, he adds, " Gen- 
eral Putnam having the principal direction and 
superintendence of the expedition." Now that 
the original witnesses and actors are all departed, 
each subsequent investigator must make the best 
use he can of all primary and secondaiy authori- 
ties. Mr. Richard Frothingham, born and living 
under the shadow of the monument, in his admir- 
able " History of the Siege of Boston," first pub- 
lished in 1849, ^^^^ since revised, has given a most 
elaborate and faithful history of the battle. 

The present writer had been privileged for some 
years by the acquaintance and kindly regards of 
the late Judge William Prescott, and of his son, 
the late eminent historian, William Hickling Pres- 
cott, — son and grandson of Colonel Prescott. 
On learning of the task in which the writer was 
engaged, both these honored men expressed their 
warmest interest in his inquiries, and contributed 
to aid them. The venerable Judge was then in 
his seventy-ninth year. Those who remember 
him, while recalling the grace and dignity, the 
purity and elevation of his character, will also be 
reminded of the exquisite modesty and retiring 
reserve which were so observable in him. He 
had read in silence the many publications from 
the year 18 18, in which different writers had 



Note. 119 

appeared as champions or advocates of the claims 
of the several officers to the command of the 
detachment sent to Charlestown on the night 
before and on the day of the battle. Of course 
his filial feelings and his sense of justice were 
aggrieved by the dispute and pleas which deprived 
his honored and patriotic father of his rightful 
laurels. But he entered no remonstrance ; he 
neither wrote nor publicly spoke on the side which 
he well knew to be that of simple truth. He was 
content in the belief that the time would come, 
with the investigation, and the voice and the pen 
that would set the facts of the case on the page 
of history. He was himself a youth in his thir- 
teenth year on his father's farm in Pepperell on 
the day of the battle, and his father lived twenty 
years after it. With frank and assured confi- 
dence he communicated to the writer that his 
father always regarded and spoke of himself as 
in full command at the battle, as having received 
and fulfilled the order of General Ward to intrench 
and defend the works, as having conducted the 
movements of the day, and made return of its 
issue at head-quarters. 

With such opportunities and helps, the "ora- 
tion " asked for was prepared, delivered, and then 
published. The historical details in it, with origi- 
nal documents, and an account of the monument, 



120 . The Battle of Bunker's {Breed's] Hill. 

were afterwards brought together by the writer 
into a small volume, published anonymously by 
Mr. C. P. Emmons, of Charlestown, in 1843. 
Several thousand copies of this publication have 
been issued, and it is now out of print. In a num- 
ber of the " New York Historical Magazine " for 
June, 1868, devoted to the battle, this publication 
is referred to and quoted as " Emmons's Sketches." 
The matter of the oration and of the book is sub- 
stantially given in the preceding pages. 

Sincerely and thoroughly convinced as the writer 
became, through his investigations, that Colonel 
Prescott was the trusted and the responsible leader 
and commander in the action at Charlestown, he 
assigned to him all the honors which belonged to 
him as such, without needing to reduce in any 
respect the laurels of his associates, except in 
not subordinating him, as others had done to them. 
It is believed that for the first time the full truth 
was then set forth in connection with historic de- 
tails. One recognition especially rewarded the 
writer. He therefore ventures to put in print a 
letter which he received from Judge Prescott, ac- 
knowledging the gift of a copy of his " Oration." 
Pie hardly need apologize for not mutilating it, by 
suppressing the personal compliments which it 
contains. The letter was written from the Judge's 
summer residence. 



Note. 121 



"Nahant, July 19th, 1841. 

My dear Sir, — I heartily thank you for the copy 
of the excellent and eloquent oration which you had 
the goodness to send me. It is by far the most intel- 
ligible and correct account I have seen of that rather 
confused battle. I beg you to believe we are not un- 
mindful of the very kind and flattering terms in which 
you have spoken of my father, not forgetting his 
descendants. I have always thought — indeed known 
— that the accounts commonly given of that action 
were incorrect, at least, and you may be assured it 
afforded me no little pleasure to find that an orator 
selected to commemorate the anniversary in a town 
whose inhabitants were witnesses to the battle, was 
able, and had the independence at this late day, upon 
a careful examination of facts, to do justice to Colonel 
Prescott in apportioning the honors of the battle-field 
among the heroes of the day. This oration, though 
but a pamphlet in form, will, I doubt not, lead the way 
to more correct views on the subject. The loss of 
the record of the appointment to the command, the 
great popularity of some names, and the efforts of 
friends, doubtless contributed to making and keeping 
alive the erroneous impressions that have more or 
less prevailed. No friend of Colonel Prescott ever 
wrote a line, or took an affidavit or declaration on the 
subject, to my knowledge. General Dearborn's state- 
ment was wholly unknown to me till I saw it in print, 
and then I much regretted its appearance. It is a 
delicate and difficult task, as you observe, to distribute 



122 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

the honors of a battle among the leaders ; and it is more 
especially so when the rank of officers is unsettled, 
orders are wanting, and the action somewhat confused. 
But the principle you have adopted, to leave it to be 
determined by the parts acted by the different com- 
petitors, one would think, could not be complained of. 
I am particularly pleased with your just remarks on 
the effects of the battle. They ought not to be over- 
looked or forgotten. The Americans lost the field, it 
is true ; but they won a great moral victory, which was 
felt in every battle to the end of the war. It made 
the brave Howe a cautious, if not timid, commander. 
I am, my dear Sir, 

Ever respectfully and very faithfully yours, 
William Prescott." 

That the Judge should have shared with his 
father thirty-three years of their joint lives, and 
not have the fullest means of knowing, in filial 
confidence, the place which he had filled and the 
service he had performed on the memorable day, 
is, of course, inconceivable. The more rare and 
impressive are the modesty and the self-respecting 
dignity which he manifested, when pens and 
tongues were so busy and so emphatic in the 
championship of other names as leaders and 
commanders, in not entering into the controversy 
in his father's advocacy. The writer was also 
assured by Judge Prescott — indeed he has it in 
writing from his own pen — that Colonel John 



Note. 123 

Trumbull, the painter, in 1786, of the fancy piece 
of the " Battle of Bunker Hill," in which Putnam 
appears as the commander of the redoubt, at 
Judge Prescott's dinner-table, expressed his sin- 
cere regret at the error he had committed, and 
his desire and purpose to rectify it. 

It was not through any set purpose of depre- 
ciating the rightful claims of one, or of exagger- 
ating those of another, in the discharge of 
honorable and responsible services, nor with any 
object of confounding the truth of history, that 
such divergences of statement and displacement 
of official services had come into the rehearsal of 
the events of the day. The confusion of the 
whole action, from its start to its close ; the tra- 
versing of the field by some, and the stationary 
places of others ; the relative importance assigned 
to various positions and movements on it ; the 
different reports which different pairs of eyes 
made to different observers; and the conclusion 
drawn by individuals that the highest military 
rank carried with it the right of command, — 
these, and various other obvious suggestions, will 
go far to explain the facts we have recognized in 
the championship of one or another of our officers. 
As a consequence, however, Colonel Prescott had 
been, to say the least, depreciated on the canvas 
and on the pages of many narratives. 



124 The Battle of Bimker's [Breed's] Hill. 

Even in the local territorial awards recognized 
in the distribution of memorials in the town of 
Charlestown, this relative neglect, though never 
intended, had a significant manifestation. Up 
to 1857, Charlestown had four conspicuous public 
grammar-school edifices, and four contiguous 
streets, bearing with admirable propriety the 
names, respectively, of Winthrop, Harvard, War- 
ren, and Bunker Hill. Winthrop, as first resident 
governor of the Colony, with the charter, had 
come to Charlestown on another 17th of June, 
1630, and began its settlement. Harvard, a re- 
vered minister of the town, and the founder of the 
college, had died, and was buried here. Warren 
had fallen on the Hill, and received all the honors 
of the patriot. Bunker Hill Street crossed over 
the brow of that summit, and the school-house, so 
named, was at its base. There was also a street 
bearing the name of Putnam. A short side-street 
had the name of Prescott. 

When, in 1857, the increase of the population 
made another and a very large school-edifice nec- 
essary, the writer, being a member of the school 
committee of Charlestown, then become a city, 
availed himself of the opportunity to urge the 
recognition of the name of " Prescott." He suc- 
ceeded in his object, and was privileged by an 
appointment to deliver the address inaugurating 
tlie spacious building, Dec. 15, 1857. 



Note. 



125 



Of course, the distinguished historian, then 
living in Boston, was asked to give his personal 
presence on an occasion meant to do honor to a 
name borne through three generations, by soldier, 
judge, and scholar. The writer was well aware 
of that shrinking diffidence of his which had in 
no case ever yielded to the many attempts, made 
alike in America and in Europe, to draw from 
him, in answer to compliments, a speech either 
at the dinner-table or on the platform. He was 
not surprised, therefore, in receiving, in answer 
to the invitation, a note, from which the following 
is an extract : " You know my infirmity in the way 
of public speaking. To talk frankly with you, I 
should not be satisfied to be present on that occa- 
sion, so complimentary to myself, and sit like a 
dumb dog, as if I were not sensible of the distin- 
guished honor conferred on me. Yet, as I have 
got on so far [sixty-one years] without opening 
my lips in public, I feel that it is now too late to 
begin." 

Mr. Prescott, however, yielded his objections, on 
the assurance of immunity for his " infirmity," . — 
a rare one for Americans. The mayor of the 
city, — the Hon. T. T. Sawyer, — who received 
him, the Hon. George S. Boutwell, Secretary 
of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Mayor 
Rice of Boston, and other guests of the occasion 



126 The Battle of Bunker's [Breed's] Hill. 

with generous hospitality, in his felicitous official 
address, said : " It is a common custom to give 
to public buildings names which shall express 
some idea of goodness, of usefulness, or of honor, 
or which shall connect the memory of some good 
or great man, or thing, with the edifice, and keep 
fresh in the mind the lesson which the name may 
convey. To this building we have attached the 
name of ' Prescott.' It will be suggestive of 
manliness, of faithfulness, and of learning. It has 
character and accomplishment to recommend it ; 
tried merit, rather than ephemeral greatness, for 
the basis on which it rests ; and we have confi- 
dently adopted it for its appropriateness and value. 
We are on the soil of Bunker Hill [near the site 
of the ' Rail Fence '], and we are in the presence 
of one of Massachusetts' noblest sons ; and if we 
may appropriate the influence of both, and there 
is any value in a name, we can commit no error in 
adopting that of ' Prescott.' " 

In the writer's dedicatory address, after an allu- 
sion to the historian's labors and fame, in his 
presence, he added : " If you were not here, I 
should say more. I must also respect the contract 
on which you come, — that the reserve which, in 
spite of your busy skill with your pen, has kept 
your lips closed upon all public occasions shall 
not be rudely broken in upon here by the neces- 



Note. 127 

sity of a speech. Your presence in silence is a 
speech to us. I know you will not esteem it 
among the least of the encomiums lavished upon 
you by royal courts, elect academies, and the great 
Republic of Letters, that a school in which thou- 
sands are to be trained in wisdom bears your 
name, and that of your father, mother, and 
grandfather." 

Mr. Prescott rose and said, " There is no greater 
honor." 

On the occasion of this visit, the grandson of 
the Commander on June 17th was taken to see 
the statue of General Warren, on the Hill. He 
may have thought that a companion statue would 
find a rightful position there. • 



THE MONUMENT UPON BREED'S HILL. 



The imposmg structure which now rises upon the 
heights of Charlestown marks the summit where the 
small redoubt was thrown up by the American patriots, 
on the night of the i6th of June, 1775. The battle has 
so long been associated with the name of Bunker's 
Hill, that it seems now almost vain to attempt to make 
the correction, which, indeed, some may think wholly 
unimportant. The probabihty is that Breed's Hill 
was considered generally as only a spur of Bunker's 
Hill, and was not distinguished by name, except among 
the residents in Charlestown, and those familiar with 
the localities of the spot. There are charts and views 
of the town, taken before and after the battle, in which 
the lesser summit appears without any designation. As 
soon as the spot became famous, this confusion of the 
names began to be manifest ; and the fact is worthy of 
notice only as it presents an instance that enables us to 
account for the disputes which, in the absence of historic 
documents, have been attached to other famous spots 
on the surface of the earth. To perpetuate the memory 
of such localities, and to secure them against /the du- 
bious haze with which the lapse of time invests them, 
is perhaps the best argument which can be adduced for 
the erection of costly monuments. Still, there will be, 



The Monument upon Brced^s Hill. 129 

as there now is, a great difference of opinion as to the 
expediency of such structures. The open battle-field, 
undisturbed and unaltered through all time, would be 
for many far preferable to any monument. 

Previous to the erection of the granite monument on 
Breed's Hill, the summit was distinguished by a small 
column in honor of Major-General Warren, who was 
regarded as the most eminent and deserving of the 
martyrs of liberty that fell there. His body was iden- 
tified, on the morning after the battle, by Dr. Jeffries, 
of Boston, an intimate acquaintance of the patriot. The 
British regarded this victim as paying the price of the 
multitude of their own slain, and the spot where they 
interred him was marked. After the evacuation of 
Boston by the British troops, and the return of its citi- 
zens to their homes, the friends of Warren disinterred 
his remains. They were taken from the Hill, and, on 
the 8th of April, 1776, being carried in procession from 
the Representatives' Chamber to King's Chapel, were 
buried with all military honors and those of Masonry. 
Prayers were offered on the occasion by the Rev. Dr. 
Cooper, and a funeral oration was delivered by Mr. 
Perez Morton, in which he boldly and earnestly urged 
an entire separation from Great Britain, as the right 
and duty of the colonists. The remains of General 
Warren now rest within the cemetery beneath St. 
Paul's Church. 

At the time of his death, Warren was Grand Mas- 
ter of Freemasons for North America ; and, as such, 
it seemed to the members of his order that they owed 
to him some tribute of respectful regard. No monu- 
9 



130 The Monument upon Breed's Hill. 

ment had been erected on the spot where he fell in 
behalf of his country, and measures were therefore 
instituted for this double purpose. 

A lodge of Freemasons was constituted in Charles- 
town, in 1783, and from its funds a monumental column 
was erected to the memory of Warren, in 1794, on land 
given by the Hon. James Russell. It was composed 
of a brick pedestal eight feet square, rising ten feet 
from the ground, and supporting a Tuscan pillar, of 
wood, eighteen feet high. This was surmounted by 
a gilt urn, bearing the inscription, "J. W., aged 35," 
entwined with Masonic emblems. On the south side 
of the pedestal was the following inscription : — 

"Erected A.D. MDCCXCIV., 

By King Solomon's Lodge of Free Masons, 

constituted in Charlestown, 1783, 

In Memory of 

Major-General Joseph Warren, 

and his Associates, 

who were slain on this memorable spot, June 17, 

1775- 

None but they who set a just value upon the blessings of 

liberty are worthy to enjoy her. In vain we toiled ; in 

vain we fought ; we bled in vain ; if you, our offspring, 

want valor to repel the assaults of her invaders. 

Charlestown settled, 1628. 
Burnt, 1775. Rebuilt, 1776." 

This column stood without the redoubt, and on the 
spot where Warren was believed to have fallen. It 
remained for forty years, and was so much defaced by 



The Monument upon Breed^s Hill. 131 

time that it was removed when the present granite 
structure was contemplated. The remembrance of it 
will be cherished by those who were familiar with it 
from a distance, or near at hand. 

The little wood-cut, which illustrates the monument 
raised to the memory of Warren, has now a rare value. 
It is copied from the " Analectic Magazine," Philadel- 
phia, for March, 18 18, where it appears under the 
title of "The Tomb of Warren." There are marked 
evidences of the striking fidelity of the representation, 
as many not very aged persons will well remember. 
Warren fell on ground a little outside of the redoubt, 
towards the north. The Hill, and the remnants of the 
redoubt, are seen in their natural condition. The visi- 
tor who drafted the view was evidently an interested 
observer and a skilful delineator of it. 

The erection of a substantial monument on this sum- 
mit had long been desired and contemplated. It was 
thought to be due as a tribute of respect to the patriots 
who, in an early day of the Revolution, risked all that 
was dear to them as individuals, on a fearful hazard, for 
the good of their common country. We must suppose 
and believe that in the awful strife, amid the shrieks 
and groans of battle, and in sight of the homes which 
these patriots loved, some better feeling than that of 
brute courage, or -thirst for blood, animated them. 
How much of their fortitude they borrowed from the 
conviction that their country would honor their mem- 
ory, and that their children would mark the spot where 
they suffered, we may only imagine. The objection 
which many conscientious persons feel to such a 



132 The Monument up07i Bi-eecVs Hill. 

commemoration seems to be founded on the belief 
that a battle monument is designed to perpetuate 
the feelings of animosity and strife between the de- 
scendants of the contending parties. But this is an 
error; and the disapprobation of monumental struct- 
ures, founded upon such a misconception, would equally 
apply to all histories and delineations of battles. We 
wish to express our grateful sense of the devotion 
and bravery of those who bore severe sufferings to 
relieve us of lighter burdens. All that we desire 
to commemorate by the towering pile now reared on 
the battle-field is patriotism and self-sacrifice. We 
believe the cause was just ; the Briton may regard it 
otherwise ; but we may alike stand upon the spot and 
honor the heroism of its victims, without the rising 
of one vengeful feeling. 

It was the general opinion that, if any monument were 
to be erected, it should be a substantial one, which 
should do credit to its builders and to their fathers ; 
and, instead of being reared at the expense of a few 
wealthy men, or at public cost, should be a free-will 
offering from all the citizens of this Commonwealth, and 
of its sister Commonwealths, according to their means. 
The result has been such as to make it probable that 
there is not a structure in this country on which the 
free contributions of so many individuals have been 
expended as upon this. Subscriptions were first asked 
for in the year 1824. An association, called '' The 
Bunker Hill Monument Association," was formed, 
membership of which was to be enjoyed by those who 
subscribed five dollars. An engraved diploma was 



The Monumejit upon Breed ^s Hill. 133 

their certificate, and their names were inscribed upon 
the parchment records deposited within the corner- 
stone. 

Some incident or circumstance which should connect 
an enthusiastic feeling with the commencement of the 
work was felt to be necessary. An occasion and oppor- 
tunity for this presented itself on the visit of the Mar- 
quis de La Fayette, our honored general, to this land, 
whose battles he had fought with the ardor of youthful 
heroism, and whose prosperity was dear to him to the 
last day of his life. In the midst of his triumphant prog- 
ress through the country, his services were enlisted in 
this work. Though the plan of the structure had not 
at this time been decided upon, yet it was thought 
most desirable that the ceremonies of laying the cor- 
ner-stone should be performed by and in the presence 
of the guest of the nation. Accordingly, on the 17th of 
June, 1825, it being the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, 
this desire was gratified. In the midst of an immense 
concourse of people, the ceremonies were performed. 
By advertisements and invitations previously inserted 
in the newspapers, the veterans who survived the day 
of slaughter were earnestly desired, free of all charge to 
themselves, to come from their homes, however distant, 
and present themselves, in one venerable group of 
worthies, to receive the grateful offering of a free peo- 
ple, on the first jubilee of the battle. In the multitude 
that answered these invitations the number of those 
who were actually engaged in the battle could not be 
ascertained, as some were of the reinforcements, who 
did not enter the field ; some belonged to regiments or 



134 1"^^^ Monument upon Breed'' s Hill, \ 

companies then at hand, but not ordered for the occa- 
sion ; and others were near or distant spectators of the 
action. Enough there were of the true remnant to show 
their scars and recount the scenes the memory of which 
the lapse of fifty years had not dimmed. The younger 
survivors of the band professed themselves still ready 
for service, should like occasion demand it ; nor, among 
those whose feeble limbs tottered under the heaviest 
burden of years, was there one whose chilled blood did 
not glow over the sods of the battle-field, while the 
starting tear told that they were thinking of their com- 
panions in arms. They were eloquently and touchingly 
addressed by the Hon. Daniel Webster, the orator of the 
occasion. La Fayette, standing as one in that group of 
survivors, and regretting that the honor did not of right 
belong to him, laid with his own hands the corner-stone 
of the projected monument. Masonic ceremonies were 
connected with the occasion. 

We cannot, however, attribute to La Fayette the 
honor of having laid the corner-stone of the present 
structure. The office in which he was enlisted was a 
matter of mere form ; no plan having been selected, of 
course no adequate foundation was made. The stone 
which had been laid by La Fayette was afterwards put 
into the centre of the foundation ; and the box of de- 
posits which it contained was taken out and enclosed 
in the present corner-stone, which is at the north- 
eastern angle of the structure, looking towards the 
point of landing of the enemy. The plan of the monu- 
ment was devised by Mr. Solomon Willard, of Boston, 
a distinguished architect ; and his original design, fol- 



The Monument upon Breed ^s Hill, 135 

lowed throughout, has been brought to a successful 
completion. 

The plan having been decided upon, the work was 
resumed about the middle of March, 1827, by the exca- 
vation of a new foundation. A quarry of sienite granite, 
situated at Quincy, eight miles distant, had been pur- 
chased and wrought upon during the previous spring. 
The stone used for the foundation and for the first 
forty feet of the structure was transported from the 
quarry on a railway to the wharf in Quincy, where it 
was put into flat-bottomed boats, towed by steam-power 
to the wharf in Charlestown, and then raised to the Hill 
by teams moving upon an inclined plane. The repeated 
transfer of the stones, necessary in this mode of con- 
veyance, being attended with delay, hability to accident, 
and a defacing of the blocks, was abandoned after the 
fortieth foot was laid, and the materials were trans- 
ported by teams directly from the quarry to the Hill. 
Some of the blocks present dark stains upon their sur- 
faces, caused by the presence of iron. Sometimes, in 
the process of hewing and hammering, these stains 
would disappear; but for a season they seem to grow 
brighter by exposure to the air, and then, by process 
of time, the influence of the atmosphere, the weather, 
and the winter frost, they gradually fade away. Several 
of these stains appear upon the last half of the struct- 
ure, but it is believed they will slowly disappear. The 
application of any chemical agent for their removal 
would not be advisable ; indeed, some persons think 
they add to the beauty of a granite pile when sparingly 
distributed over it. No one can stand and look at the 



136 The Monument upon Breed's Hill. 

structure, or scan it with a close observation, without 
being impressed with the wonderiul mathematical ac- 
curacy which distinguishes it. The joints of the stones 
seem to be chiselled with great exactness, as" if they 
were worked with all the ease with which the carpenter 
shapes his wood ; and the diminution of the obelisk, a 
work of extreme difficulty, has been faultlessly exe- 
cuted. A slight failure or error in either of these par- 
ticulars would have been a hideous deformity, and 
would have endangered the stability of the structure. 
We rely for its permanence upon its mathematical ac- 
curacy, as much as upon the solidity of its materials. 

The distinguished honor of having thus with scien- 
tific precision begun and completed the imposing 
-structure belongs to Mr. James Savage, of Boston. 
Of many great pubHc works, the builder has been 
wholly forgotten ; of others, the credit has been with- 
held from the mechanical geniuses who executed them, 
and has been all bestowed upon those who have drafted 
the plan upon paper. But to execute such a work, 
however skilfully it may have been planned, demands a 
rare union of talents. To take in the conception, to 
comprehend its details, to criticise its excellencies or 
defects, to suggest improvements, to invent facilities, 
to combine two or more objects, and then to watch 
each laborious process, guarding against accidents 
and mistakes, — to do all this requires one who is 
much more than a mechanic. In such a structure 
as the monument, though it is very simple, patience, 
care, skill, and ingenious device were continually 
needed. Mr. Savage possessed all the requisite quali- 



The Monument upon Breed's Hill. 137 

iications, and his name ought to go down to posterity 
with the monument. Those who watched the rising of 
the pile could not fail to observe his unwearied and 
unerring interest in his work. He might be seen above 
or below, as occasion called for him ; now superintend- 
ing the setting of a step ; now suspended upon a plank 
at a dizzy eminence outside the structure ; now testing 
the strength of a fastening ; or, with his hand upon 
the bell-wire, sending notice to the engine to rest, just 
as a ponderous stone, poised high in air, was gently 
weighing over the upper courses of the obelisk. And, 
to complete the effect of his presence of mind and 
skill, there was no haste or bustle in his movements, 
and he was ready to answer the questions of every 
visitor. But one accident occurred during the whole 
work. A laborer, while engaged in laying the last 
stone of the twelfth course, on the south-west corner, 
was pushed off and killed. 

The whole structure was made under the superin- 
tendence of Mr. Savage, under three different con- 
tracts. At first he was engaged as builder by Mr. 
Willard, the architect, and furnished the materials and 
the labor. This arrangement continued during the 
years 1827 and 1828, when the foundation and fourteen 
courses of the superstructure were laid. In August, 
1828, the work was suspended on account of deficiency 
of funds, about $56,000 having been expended, includ- 
ing the purchase of the right in the quarry for all the 
necessary materials, the gearing at the wharves and on 
the Hill, which was complicated and expensive, but not 
including the purchase of the land. 



138 The Monument upon Breed^s Hill. 

In the summer of 1834, the work was resumed^ 
]\Ir. Savage, being still employed by Mr. Willard, was 
obliged, on account of an engagement for service under 
the United States government, to commit the oversight 
of the work to Mr. Charles Pratt, though by occasional 
visits he continued to superintend and direct it. Six- 
teen more courses were laid, when the work was again 
closed for want of funds, in 1835, about $20,000 more 
having been expended. Depression in all the interests 
of trade and business, a derangement in the financial 
affairs of the country, and a general opinion that the 
large sums of money already collected had not been 
judicially or economically expended, will account for 
the delay in the completion of the work. Probably, 
however, the durability of the structure was rather 
advanced than injured by the pause of a few years. 
Suggestions were occasionally offered that the work 
might be brought to a point at its then existing eleva- 
tion, but it was thought better to wait in hope, under 
the conviction that it would one day be completed 
according to the original plan. 

The happy suggestion, which was offered for the 
sake of meeting the pecuniary want, and which, as 
soon as it was uttered, everybody knew would be 
triumphantly realized, came from the weaker sex, who 
had no hand, thougli they had much heart, in the 
fighting which had immortalized the summit. It was 
proposed that a public Fair should be held in the city 
of Boston, and that every female in the United States 
of America, who desired the honor, should work with 
her own hands, and contribute with her own means, to 



The Monument upon Breed's HilL 139 

furnish the Fair, the other sex being, of course, allowed 
to contribute what they pleased, and being expected 
to purchase with liberahty. The plan was most suc- 
cessful. A brilliant and dazzhng display, as well as an 
exhibition of the results of devoted industry and cun- 
ning ingenuity, of which we have, at least, as much 
reason to feel proud as of the battle, attested that the 
call was not made in vain. The fair was held in 
Boston, in September, 1840, and its proceeds, with a 
few munificent private donations, which should be 
considered as depending upon it, put within the hands 
of the Committee of the Bunker Hill Association a sum 
sufficient to complete the great object. Mr. Savage, 
by a contract with the Building Committee, was en- 
gagea, in the autumn of 1840, to complete the work 
for $43,800. He resumed his labor by laying the first 
stone on May 2, 1841, and finished it with entire suc- 
cess, by depositing the apex on July 23, 1842. The 
last stone was raised at six o'clock in the morning 
of that day, with the discharge of cannon ; Mr. Ed- 
ward Carnes, Jr., of Charlestown, accompanying it in 
its ascent, and waving the American flag during the 
process.*^ 

The section of the monument which accompanies 
this description will convey an idea of the mode of its 
construction. The foundation, lying twelve feet below" 
the base of the structure, is composed of six courses of 
fair-spht stones. The lower tier rests upon a bed of 
clay and gravel which composes the soil of the Hill ; 
great pains having been used in loosening the earth, 
and in puddling and ramming ih.t stones. The foun- 



140 The Afomwtefit upon Breed^s Hill. 

dation is laid in lime mortar ; the other parts of the 
structure with lime mortar mixed with cinders and iron 
filings, and with Springfield hydraulic cement. Below 
the base the four faces of the foundation project into a 
square of fifty feet, leaving open angles at the corners, 
so that these projections act as buttresses. There are 
ninety courses of stone in the whole structure, eighty- 
four of them being above the ground, and six of them 
below. The base is thirty feet square ; in a rise of 
two hundred and eight feet, the point where the for- 
mation of the apex begins, there is a diminution of 
fourteen feet seven and a half inches. The net rise 
of the stone from the base to the apex is two hundred 
and nineteen feet and ten inches, the seams of mortar 
making the whole elevation two hundred and twenty- 
one feet. 

Perpendicular dowels, called Lewis's Clamps^ were 
used to bind the first four courses above the base. This 
was done chiefly as an experiment, but, being found to 
be useless and expensive, the method was abandoned. 
The several stones w^hich compose each course are 
clamped together by flat bars of iron, fourteen inches 
long, the ends being turned at right angles and sunk in 
the granite five-eighths of an jnch. 

There are four faces of dressed stone in the struct- 
ure, besides the steps which wind around the cone 
within, viz., the exterior and the interior sides of the 
monument, and the exterior and the interior of the cone 
within it. Twelve stones compose the exterior, and 
six large circling stones the interior, of each course of 
the shaft : to each course of the shaft there are two 



The Monument upon Breed^s Hill. 141 

courses of the cone, each being composed of six 
stones, and four steps answer to each course of the 
exterior of the shaft. Each of the first seventy-eight 
courses of the exterior of the shaft is two feet eight 
inches in height; of the next five courses, those com- 
posing the point, the height of each is one foot eight 
inches ; the cap or apex is a single stone of three feet 
six inches in height. 

The exterior diameter of the cone at the base is ten 
feet ; the interior diameter seven feet ; at the top of 
the cone the exterior diameter is six feet three inches, 
the interior diameter four feet two inches. The cone 
is composed of one hundred and forty-seven courses 
of stone, each course being one foot four inches i 



in 



The elliptical chamber at the top is seventeen feet in 
height and eleven feet in diameter, with four windows, 
each two feet eight inches in height, and two feet two 
inches in breadth. 

There are numerous apertures in the cone, and eight 
in the shaft, besides the door and the windows. The 
windows are closed with iron shutters. At the door- 
way the walls of the shaft are six feet in thickness. 
There are two hundred and ninety-four steps in the 
ascent. 

In fulfilling his third and final contract, Mr. Savage 
removed the gearing which had previously been used, 
and substituted a steam-engine of six-horse power, and 
an improved and ingenious boom-derrick of his own 
invention. Through two apertures in the cone he 
passed a strong beam, in w^iich the foot of the derrick 



142 The Alonunient upon Breed'' s Hill. \ 

was inserted, turning on a pivot. This was raised 
with the completion of each four courses of the exte- 
rior. A projecting arm attached to the boom extended 
far enough to clear the base of the monument, and 
was slightly inclined downwards. The ropes passed 
through shives at the top of the boom and the extrem- 
ity of the lever, and when the stone was poised at its 
elevation, it was drawn in by means of a wheel car- 
riage on the lever, which was turned upon the pivot to 
either side, and the load was deposited. The steam- 
engine was directly in the rear of the monument, and 
the ropes passed down through the cone, and out at 
the door-way. A bell-wire passing up by the ropes, 
communicated instantaneously with the engine, and di- 
rected its motions. A platform staging, bound around 
the monument by cogs adapted 1o its gradual diminu- 
tion, and raised with each two courses of the exterior, 
served as a standing-place for the masons who pointed 
the work outside. 

This apparatus served till it was necessary to cover 
over the chamber at the top, when, of course, the 
boom-derrick and cone could be used no longer. 
The last work of the derrick was to draw up a stout 
oaken beam, which was passed through two of the 
windows, and two masts, which being rigged over 
the projections of the beam and lopped over the side 
of the monument, the remaining stones were slowly but 
safely raised, and then, the masts being righted perpen- 
dicularly, they were deposited in their places. The 
steady industry of the engine, and the cautious over- 
sight of Mr. Savage, made these last operations exceed- 



The Monw7ient upon Breed's Hill. 143 

ingly and intensely interesting. It was at first proposed 
that the raising and depositing of the last stone should 
be attended with parade, formality, and a public cele- 
bration ; but this was wisely discountenanced by Mr. 
Savage, who knew that the caution and care and pres- 
ence of mind which were requisite would be best 
secured by quiet, and a degree of privacy. Accord- 
ingly, the last stone was raised, as we have said, at 
six o'clock on the morning of the 23d of July, 1842, in 
presence of the officers of the Bunker Hill Monument 
Association, and a few other spectators. 

On the 17th of the previous June, before the chamber 
at the top had been covered over, a cannon, which had 
been raised on the preceding evening, sent forth its 
volleys in a national salute. 

Those who enjoyed the view from the unclosed 
chamber, or from the top of the structure before the 
last stone was laid, seemed to feel a disappointment 
when the view was contracted into the range of vision 
.as confined by the narrow windows. But this feeling 
will not affect those who look for the first time through 
the windows over a scene which unites the sublime 
and the beautiful, which embraces ocean, islands, 
mountains, woods, and rivers, cities and villages, 
churches and school-houses, palaces and happy cottage 
homes of contented industry, free from the sceptre of 
an earthly monarch, but, therefore, all the more bound 
in allegiance of gratitude and reverence to the King of 
kings. 

The whole cost of the monument is set down on the 
books of the treasurer of the Association at $133,649.83. 



144 The Mo7iument upon Breed^s Hill. 

The cost of the obelisk was about $120,000. Other 
expenses were incurred in grading the Hill and fencing 
the precincts. The annual charges for a guardian of 
the monument, and for keeping the grounds in order, 
are met by fees received from visitors who ascend the 
shaft. These amounted in 1874 to $4,975.30. 



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